nigelswift wrote:
Quite odd how archaeos poo poo "ley lines " very readily but quite happily talk of alignments .
The statisticians job would not be to consider the accuracy , that is self evident but to point out the likliehood of the "event" being due to chance .Totally agree. And I suspect leylines in terms of visually based long-distance routes will one day make a comeback into respectability. They make such practical sense.
I think you're right that the statisticians need to get involved as well. Nothing is perfectly accurate so it needs a mechanism to determine whether "closely aligned" is statistically significant or merely chance.
The figures you quote look temptingly accurate. But what is the mechanism by which they could have done it?
There are a lot of sites and what are the chances that they are likely to
have significant values . If as I said that it is a case of epiphenomalism then there is no mechanism but it is an incidental product of another process .