The Worst Mystery

The mystery occurred in 1908 when the infamous goose thief had stolen a goose from the nautical area surrounding the beach. The detective to the case had been hired by the private firm to recoup these gooses to their ocean. Indeed, it was a new innovation in the law, that a private firm, instead of the state, would be the motor of justice and to this end they hired a new sort of detective, the scientist, to solve the mystery. 

This scientist was no other than Detective, who went by the pen name Detective to hide his true identity as a scientist cleverly. This Detective began work immediately on the case. Sitting in the indoor barracks of the justice firm, a cup of coffee and pipe in his mouth, he worked on the case. It was a very new theoretical process to solve the mystery as Detective realized that there could only be one perpetrator, while another person might not be the perpetrator. It was this insight that lead to his other momentous discovery, that this perpetrator might have things in common with other perpetrators. So as Detective thought about the average perpetrator, he thought of the characteristics and wrote them down. Next he visited the perpetrators that had already been established in the barracks and viewed their characteristics, and measured each one and put it in the chart.  Then he talked to his co-workers and the janitors and supervisors who were established as non-perpetrators and put them in a chart too. Months went by and the elaborate chart was growing bigger. 

However it was on the Tuesday of the month that Detective realized that many weeks had gone by and he still had not found the goose perpetrator. He used the telephone which had been invented and called the people living on the beach. He invited them all to dinner at the barracks for an interview. 

The next day two hundred people who lived by the beach showed up for the sneaky meal which in fact did not exist as proposed. Instead there was interrogation!

Detective asked the people for their characteristics and compared them to his chart. Some people's characteristics were not like those of the perpetrators and so they were released into the town that was by the beach, from which this sample had arrived. But twenty-seven people remained. Their characteristics were like the perpetrator characteristic. It was at this point that Detective used his most ingenious characteristic construct, that of goose-stealing, on his suspect population. 

Unfortunately, the first twenty-six people scored very lower means than that of the average goose-stealer. But then came the twenty-seventh person. This person's mean across the twenty questions leading to suggestion of goose stealing was higher!

Detective thought he had found the culprit. But now he had to be the prosecutor in the court of law.

The court adjourned. "Is it true that you scored within the first standard deviation above the mean for the construct of goose stealing?" asked Detective.

"Maybe, I do not know the results of that test," admitted the suspect, who was correct, never having been shown these results.

"Let me show the data now," said the detective. "Indeed, you have a score of 75! That is four points higher than the mean! And this is the mean for characteristic of goose stealing!"

"But isn't those numbers should be divided?" asked the defending lawyer. 

"Aha!" But they were!" said Detective, triumphantly. "And it is different by .056!" 

"Oooo that is really close to .05!" admitted the defending lawyer. 

"Well if you've impressed the defending lawyer, then you have impressed me!" said the judge. "The court is now ready to sentence the defendant."

"What?" asked Detective. "But that was not a proof. That just means he is likely a goose perpetrator when compared to the average goose thief, I am nearly 95% certain that this person is more like the average goose thief than the average goose-thief, according to my goose thief characteristic and 5% sure that it was just a fluke!"

"Oh," said the judge. "That will be taken into consideration duly. If this person is only nearly 95% guilty, then he will only have to pay 95% of the price of a new goose that will return to the nautical area near the beach." 

"No, no," said Detective. "I'm 95% sure he's guilty!" corrected Detective.

"Yes, you said that already," said the annoyed judge. "I order the defendant to buy 95% of a new goose."

"Do you mean 95% percent of the actual goose, or is someone going to pay the other 5% for the whole thing?" asked the defendant. 

"Either way," agreed the judge.