20 September 2011

Another Look at the Absurdities in the Bible

Some of you were probably bothered by my last post on absurdities. Regression analysis is lots of fun, but what you really wanted was a Cleveland dot chart that would show at a glance the total number of absurdities in each book of the Bible. So I decided to make one for you.

So it turns out that Luke has the most absurdities in the New Testament, with Revelation a close second. Luke didn't show up as an outlier in the regression analysis since it also has the most verses in the New Testament.

What we need is an Absurdity Index that will take into account the number of absurdities and the number of verses.

And here's what I came up with.

Absurdity Index = 100 * Number of Absurdities / Number of Verses

Which is the number of absurdities per 100 verses.

Here's the Absurdity Index dot chart.

Now we see that Revelation is the clear winner for the New Testament, but Leviticus only gets the Old Testament's bronze medal for Absurdity. The little books of Jonah and Haggai are the most absurd, as measured by the Absurdity Index.

And what about the book of Psalms? It looked like a low outlier in the regression analysis, but now it's buried near the bottom with a bunch little books. Ezra and Nehemiah have the lowest AIs, but that's not because they're good; it's because they are so damned boring.

Which will be the topic of my next Biblical Statistics post: The Boring Index.

4 comments:

skanksta said...

:)

Jay said...

You don't define "absurd" which indicates a lack of objectivity and more a leaning towards manipulation similar to that of American media.

Steve Wells said...

Oh, thanks for that J. That was really helpful.

But actually I do define "absurd" -- in a subjective, manipulating, sort of way, like you'd expect from the American media.

GaryOfTheNorth said...

Now do the writings of Lewis Carroll.