Water witching, the practice of using the movements of a forked twig to locate underground water (or minerals), dates back over four hundred years. Its first detailed description appears in Agricola’s Dere Metallica, published in 1556. That water witching works remains a belief widely held among rural people in Europe and throughout the Americas. [In 1960 the number of ‘‘active’’ water witches in the United States was estimated to be more than 20,000 (205).] Reliable evidence supporting or refuting water witching is hard to find. Personal accounts of isolated successes or failures tend to be strongly biased by the attitude of the observer. Of all the wells dug in Fence Lake, New Mexico, twenty-nine ‘‘witched’’ wells and thirty-two ‘‘nonwitched’’ wells were sunk. Of the ‘‘witched’’ wells, twenty-four were successful. For the ‘‘nonwitched’’ wells, there were twenty-seven successes. What would you conclude?
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An Introduction to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications (6th Edition)
- Trigonometry (MindTap Course List)TrigonometryISBN:9781305652224Author:Charles P. McKeague, Mark D. TurnerPublisher:Cengage Learning