Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

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This is an interesting point. Wikipedia's page on St. Michael's Sword describes it as "monasteries and other sacred sites" and also notes that they are also "almost all located on prominent hilltops". Only four of the seven locations show up on Wikipedia's list of "churches dedicated to Saint Michael" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel)#Churches_d...).

Also worth noting: "[Michael's] churches were often located in elevated spots", says the page on San Michele Arcangelo, Perugia.

The obvious next step here is gathering a database of every spot claimed to be sacred to Michael, plotting them on a map, and seeing if this particular set of seven places leaps out of the data. But that sure sounds like work.

(Well, that's the obvious next data scientist step, there's also the obvious next step for the magician or priest, which is to go to or create a sacred space suitable for summoning archangels, call down Michael, and say "hey thanks for coming, so what's up with this line we call your sword?".)

Here's a partial map of churches in Europe dedicated to Michael: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1MyM

If you filter to monasteries, it trims it down a lot https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1MyP

I would say the next logical step is figuring out the probability that with this many points, what is the likelihood of 7 of them being this close to being on a line? We can assume a uniform random distribution on the unit circle or square for simplicity.

Erm human population is pretty far from uniform, and is a certain population threshold is a pre-requisite for building one of these sites.

Looking at that map of sites in France alone, randomly distributed is a good first approximation for figuring out the probability.

Pondered the estimation a bit more. The first two points of a group of 7 define a line. The probability of the remaining five being close enough to the line is just the probability of each being close enough, to the power of five. We can roughly estimate that probability as the "close enough" distance divided by the total area. Let's just normalize. Let's assume distribution within a unit square Some of the lines would not cut in a way that most of the "close enough" area is inside the box, but that's a constant factor and not to big.

Given n points and the probability p7 that seven points lie close enough to a line, we take the number of different sets of seven points, N7 = (n choose 7). The likelihood of a match is (1-(1-p7)^N7).

This is a very rough estimation, of course, but it gives some idea of the likelihood.

You can’t just rip off Tim Powers and Alan Moore like that.

Yes you can, you just have to be willing to accept that the answer might be "oh yeah it is literally where my sword scarred the earth when I sent the Devil back to Hell, and by hearing this directly from my mouth you are now eligible to be enlisted in the secret society that makes sure it never opens again; go to theswordofstmichaels.org and apply for an account if you want to know more about the perks, responsibilities, and dangers of joining."

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