Statistics

I've already linked to the story of the so-called Jesus tomb and pointed out that names like Jesus were quite popular back then in the region, so finding a "son of Jesus" is not really a huge find. But Cameron and crew claim that the chances of finding another family with these names is 1 in 600. That is pretty dubious, at best, but for fun let's say it's meaningful.

People often cite statistics to prove some claim without understanding what they mean. The odds of getting a full house in a hand of poker are 1 in 694. That means for every 694 hands of poker I play, I can expect one full house, on average. So if I play 1400 hands, I expect 2 full houses. If I play 6,940 hands, I expect 10 full houses, on average.

Cameron's argument is akin to claiming that only 1 in 600 families would have that collection of names. Sounds pretty rare, doesn't it? How many families would have been found in Jerusalem circa 33 AD? 60 thousand? I'm not sure, but the city was certainly not some backwater town so I would expect a good number. Let's say there were 60,000 families at the time. Then we would expect no less than 100 families to have that collection of names. In that case, the odds that this one particular family is the "right" one is 1%.

So Cameron and crew are admitting it's a wild shot in the dark, but making their admission in such a way that the gullible don't realize they are admitting it.