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Letter: Unlikely odds

Published 2 April 2014

From Tony Lacy

I was taken by Fred Pearce’s epithet of “a simple conceit” applied to the title of David Sedlak’s book Water 4.0 (15 March, p 50). I even looked up this phrase as I had not come across it before. Imagine my surprise when, on the next page, reviewer Jonathon Keats describes the title of David Hand’s book as “simply a conceit”.

Assuming that the two book reviews were independently written, I wonder what the odds are of finding this phrase on consecutive pages? David Hand would have enjoyed this example of his “Improbability Principle”.
Llanerfyl, Powys, UK

Issue no. 2963 published 5 April 2014

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