Garland,
What was the date of your query to Dr Dean Knuth ?
What was the date of his response ?
Can we see the entire text of both ?
Patrick,
Whatever the dates, and whatever the text of the query/response, I don't think you need to see it. You KNOW what happened; Garland posed a ludicrous hypothetical to Dr. Knuth that had a minute degree of mathematical possibility and Dr. Knuth confirmed that there could be hypothetical cases where it occurred. Garland, of course, has been arguing for days now that such a thing DOES happen, despite the fact that nobody here has ever seen or even heard of it ACTUALLY happening even once, much less routinely.
Referring to my post #279, here is an analogous conversation between me and my life insurance agent.
Me: "Would it be possible for me to die from the spontaneous combustion of my pajamas?"
My agent: "Huh?"
Me: "I'm asking you is that POSSIBLE?"
My agent: "There are many, many thousands of more likely scenarios for your demise; maybe we should talk about those."
Me: "But is the PJ scenario POSSIBLE?"
My agent: "Well, I'm looking at a website that says the odds are 1 in 31 million against it."
Me: "BUT IS IT POSSIBLE?"
My agent: "Well, yes, I suppose it must be or the odds would be even higher, say 300 million to 1 or something like that."
Me: "Thanks; that's all I wanted to know!"
I played 117 rounds on my home course in 2013; the course has the traditional 4 par 3s and 4 par 5s. If what Garland is saying, that yardage really doesn't matter, then there should have been a few days where my aggregate score on the 5s was lower than my aggregate score on the 3s. Moreover, the gap between the hole handicaps of the 3s should be pretty low compared to the 5s, because bogey golfers don't lose much when they move back, according to the Book of GJB.
But I didn't even have one day like that among the 117 rounds in 2013, and the hole handicaps for the 3s and 5s are NOT close together. The obvious reason for the first is that yardage matters to low to mid handicappers. The obvious reason for the second is that yardage matters to bogey golfers, too.
Imagine for a moment a club that handicapped their holes in such as way as to NOT give strokes on the par 5s and the longest par 4s first, but instead gave the strokes first on the par 3s. Who would be pleased and who would scream about the handicaps?
Or put another way, why did Ross end so many courses with a par 3? Presumably to lessen the likelihood that a match that reached the 18th hole see the match won or lost because of an awarded handicap stroke. Par 3s are shorter, and shorter is the biggest single factor in easier. This was known to Ross, it is known to you and me, and it known to every golfer everywhere.
Except one...