Research source

And Wales in the last completed decade being 19.15 per 1000 per annum, the average probability that any…

Date of account: Published 1894
Source: Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy
Reference: Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy · selected passage 153
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

and Wales in the last completed decade being 19.15 per 1000 per annum, the average probability that any particular person will die on any particular day is 1000 × 365 / 19.15 = about 1 in 19,000

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

and Wales in the last completed decade being 19.15 per 1000 per annum, the average probability that any particular person will die on any particular day is 1000 × 365 / 19.15 = about 1 in 19,000. That is, there is one chance in 19,000 that a man will die on the day on which his apparition is seen and recognised, supposing there to be no causal connection between the two events. Or in other words, for every hallucination which coincides with the death of the person seen, we should have to find about 18,999 similar hallucinations (_i.e._, recognised apparitions of living persons) which do not so coincide.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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