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Rich,

On Tue, 29 Oct 1996, Richard Pyle wrote:

> > These aren't anecdotes; they amount to experience.
>
> What's the diff?  How many anecdotes do you need before you can call it
> "experience".

Three, because the confidence interval on three always includes five and
no one can deny five life-saving/threatening anecdotes.

> The fact of the matter is, there is no fundamental
> difference between data gleaned from scientific experiments than there is
> from anecdotal experience.

No, you don't usually have any control data; that's the real difference.
But as I said (you must have missed the implied <G>) "non-random
experience or anecdotes" often accounts for much of the so-called
scientific data we have.

So we have some data: a few events and your belief in the fishermens'
tales (a usually reliable source, right?) Are we interpreting the limited
data correctly? Is a scooter a dinner-bell or just something extra to make
a shark curious or territorial? The question of you-who-knows-the-fishes
is am I going to sleep with the fishes or are they just going to roust me
like the farmyard dog? Should shark chummers shove the chum and buy
scooters to attract sharks to their tourist cages or is this a mild
irritant in the eye of the average shark that just happens by? Because
for many people with access to scooters in open water, this difference
really will make a difference.

-pH

..And no, I really do want to know, I am not pigwrestling.

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