Schwarzenegger Gives California Legislators the Finger
 

http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-cont...2009/10/fu.jpg

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I approve.

:lol

Schwarzenegger: Profanity in veto was 'wild coincidence'

WASHINGTON — It may be highly improbable mathematically, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that the encoded profanity contained in one of his veto messages was "a wild coincidence."

Speaking to reporters at the White House, the Republican governor said: "That was a total coincidence. It was one of those wild coincidences."

The first letter in seven lines of the message, when read from top to bottom, combine to spell out "F-- you."

Schwarzenegger sent the letter to Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who earlier had told the governor to "kiss my gay a-- ."

Stephen Devlin, the chair of the math department at the University of San Francisco, told the San Francisco Weekly that the odds of the letters appearing in proper order in seven consecutive lines to spell out the profanity was one in 10 million.

"Not surprisingly, it's virtually impossible for this to happen," Devlin told the newspaper.

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^^^Checked that math.

Assuming that only two punctuation marks are used throughout the letter, '.' and ',' along with 26 letters...that would be 10^7, which is 1:10,000,000 odds.

I think that Mr. Devlin got lazy and is off by the English letter usage frequency, as we can damn-near rule out 'z' and 'x' and a couple other letters.

Before we get all uptight, up-at-arms, and
uppity about Mr. Schwarzenegger's seemingly
singular indiscretion, we really ought to examine
the words and phrases in correspondence during his terms--the
entire body of the Governor's vetoes, and then weigh that
data in light in of the instant evidence.

Dare I say that I would not be surprised nor caught
unprepared if, in fact, the Governor
did do exactly what it seems as further
evidenced by his quick (and lame) denial.

Wait what are you correcting Mr. Devlin on? Aren't the numbers you gave the same he gave?

Nope. I was giving a head-nod to the doc's lazy methods. If he weighted the letters, the percentage chance of a line beginning with "I" or "t" would be far greater than a "k", which is something his calculation doesn't account for.