Ric,
Although Betty remembered decades later that she started listening at 4:30, as you often point out yourself, people’s recollection of past life events can be flawed. I think I read that when you visited Mr. Bevington in England a few years ago, he misremembered some significant things about his time on Nikumaroro; I know for sure than in the
Ameliapedia article on the Norwich City, you point out that Dick Evans, a veteran of the Niku/Gardner Loran misremembered things about the wreck of the Norwich City. So, I don’t know how sure we can be that Betty was correct about what time it was when she started to listen. It occurs to me for instance that, the ‘4:30’ entry on page 3 of her notebook might be what made Betty think that 4:30 was when she started listening, i.e., her recall of that decades-old event was influenced by having re-read her notes of the event.
As for interpreting the time information in Betty’s notes, the time information is ambiguous, isn’t it? If it is inadvisable to rely on Betty’s decades-old recollection about when she was listening, why assume that 4:30 corresponds to the start of page 1? Why didn’t Betty just flip back to page 1 and write ‘since 4:30’ at the top of page 1, if that was when she started her note taking? To me, it seems equally plausible that ‘since 4:30’ at the top of page 3 indicates that 4:30 was the time Betty started page 3, and pages 1 and 2 are things she recorded prior to 4:30; Betty wasn’t keeping track of time prior to 4:30 and thus there are no time entries on those two pages. Page 4 has “5:30 1 hr” written at the top, but the 5:30 isn’t paired with another time. You’re assuming the end time of page 4 was 6 PM so that it meshes with the “6:00 end at 6:15” written at the top of page 5. I can understand why that seems reasonable to you.
But, a somewhat different timeline seems just as plausible to me. I take the “4:30 and 5:10” on page 3 to mean she started page 3 at 4:30 and the last intelligible line she heard was at 5:10; for the next 20 minutes or so Betty heard only garbled transmissions. Betty started a new page (page 4) at 5:30 and recorded on page 4 till 6 PM. Page 5 then represents what Betty heard in the 6PM to 6:15 time interval.
To summarize this timeline:
-Page 3 corresponds to 4:30 to 5:10 PM; 19 lines/40 minutes = 0.5 lines per minute (lpm)
-Page 4 corresponds to 5:30 to 6:00; 18 lines/30 minutes = 0.6 lpm.
-Page 5 corresponds to 6:00 to 6:15; 16 lines/15 minutes = 1 lpm.
Averaging over pages 3 to 5 we have 53 lines in about 90 minutes, about 0.6 lpm.
Pages 1 and 2 would have been recorded in about 1 hour (38 lines/0.6 lpm= 60 minutes) and thus these two pages could represent the 3:30 to 4:30 time period based on the average lpm for this alternate timeline.
Now, I’m not saying that this timeline is more plausible than the one you suggested, Ric, but it seems as plausible as the one you suggested.
So, I think it’s plausible that the first two pages of Betty’s notebook record things she heard prior to 4:30 PM. Did Bob Brandenburg calculate probabilities for 3:30 to 4:30 PM? If so, it would be worth going back and seeing what his results were.
In the spirit of the confidence assessment exercise you announced earlier today, I think this is worth looking at.