Exotic cuisine and statistics
Vacations are, by design, short and meant to be lived to the fullest. Hence, the kid and I went out to eat, again this evening. Exotic cuisine: donairs, prepared by a young lady who was fixated on getting a telephone number to contact us when our order was ready. I explained that such a measure was unnecessary, and so she used her own. Forms must be completed, in that wage bracket.
After our feast in a local park, we headed back home with the radio providing the news of the day. I must have mistuned (or else the CBC was in a particularly distracted mode), but I learned that in upstate WA, a large number of farmed salmon had escaped. Accidents happen; I doubt that the reason given in the new clip was the actual one: “Exceptional tides, triggered by the eclipse, caused the nets to implode”. Please, parse and ponder.
Back home, I did a quick search and found the story. Verbatim. The masthead proudly proclaimed this as “Fox News”, which confirms that their network should consider hiring someone who has studied science for more than one rainy afternoon in kindergarten. Here’s a link to the story: Salmon Escape.
A quick check of even the most cursory explanation of tidal forces shows one fact that fits. Yes, you will have what are known as “spring tides” during a solar eclipse. You’ll also have them, periodically, through a given year. In short, the correlation does not imply causation. Thank you, all those hours spent with a statistics textbook on my desktop.
