To: tyagi mordred nagasiva From: personal email Subject: King Wen's I Ching Sequence Date: 49941027 This showed up yesterday in alt.tarot and I'm sure you read that topic too, but just to be sure I thought I'd pass this along (see forwarded message below). I checked the Journal at our University Library and made a photocopy of it. Statistics and probability theory have never been interests of mine so I found it a bit obtuse. The hypothesis is (as I understand it) that using the yarrow stalk divination method your chances of getting particular lines are not even. -0- 3 out of 16 --- 5 out of 16 - - 7 out of 16 -X- 1 out of 16 Since the probablity of moving lines varies, the variety of resulting hexagram will not be even. Thus over the long term, certain hexagram will come up more often and other will be more rare. The King Wen order is a frequency distribution, least frequent are first, more frequent are latter. Now the way the author "proves" his hypothesis is by using a computer simulation that mimics the yarrow stalk method by generating hexagrams from many thousand of throws. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but it is certainly an interesting spin on an old chestnut. Please keep me apprised of any developments you come across. ____________ To: alt.tarot From: jktaber@netcom.com (John K. Taber) Subject: Mystery of I Ching Hexagram Order Solved Date: Wed, 26 Oct 1994 00:50:08 GMT I don't know how to broach this subject, nor in what newsgroups it belongs, so I'm just plunging on. The Proceedings of the APL94 Conference in Antwerp contains a paper by Pavel Luksha of Obninsk, Russia on the arrangement of the hexagrams in the I Ching. If I understand his paper correctly, they are arranged according to the probability distribution of the prescribed method of picking an entry, by groups of probabilities. The most probable group comes first (only one), the next most probable group (several), and so on to the last hexagram, again only one in the group. There is an involved way of "casting" yarrow sticks repeatedly to select the hexagram for a reading, line by line. The translation of Luksha's paper uses the term "milfoil" but I think yarrow sticks must be meant. This is the "prescribed" way of obtaining a reading, which leads to the probability distribution tested by Luksha. So far as I can tell, Luksha's paper is convincing, but I'm no mathematician, and I have not attempted to proofread the APL. If his paper is correct, and I think it is, it is noteworthy, because the ordering of the I Ching has been an unsolved historical problem. Unfortunately, APL is nowadays an obscure language, so Luksha's paper may well be missed. Further, the I Ching may be an obscure book to those few left familiar with APL, so that those who do stumble across his paper might miss its significance. The I Ching is a very important ancient book in Chinese history and culture. It is still used today for fortune telling. Therefore the followups: to comp.lang.apl, to soc.culture.chinese, and to alt.tarot. Often, tarot fans are familiar with the I Ching. There does not seem to be a newsgroup devoted to the I Ching, so I'm using alt.tarot, faut de mieux. If this post is inappropriate, please don't hesitate to say so. Otherwise, I hope to start some discussion. The paper is Probabilistic studies of I Ching with use of APL. Pavel Luksha PO Box 157 Obninsk 1 249020 Russia email: luksha@market.obninsk.su It appears in APL and its Applications, International Conference 11-15 September 1994 Antwerp, Belgium Conference Proceedings. It is published by APL Quote Quad, Vol 25, No 1, Sept 1994. -- John K. Taber jktaber@netcom.com =========================================================================== We have kept our erasers in order.