Summary: "Some monstrous beast" [HOUN] In his recent lambasting of Sherlock Holmes, art historian Noah Charney got in over his head. According to Charney, Holmes makes faulty assumptions and jumps too hastily to his conclusions. But if anyone in the January 26th Daily Beast pan "Is Sherlock Holmes a Good Detective?" is guilty of this, it must be Noah Charney, along with his principal source, Dr. Robin Bryant. When it comes to Sherlock Holmes, they see, but they do not observe. After muddling about with the curious incident of the dog in the night-time from "Silver Blaze," and reaching the sort of conclusions that only faulty analysis can produce, Charney further snipes at Holmes's analytical abilities by means of a numeric puzzle. "Based on the following numbers, what would you guess comes next in this sequence: 2, 4, 8, 16, X. Most people guess that the next number, X, will be 32, each number doubling. That’s a fair guess. But the answer to this particular question is not 32. The next most common estimate is 8, respondents concluding that the sequence will reverse itself. This is also reasonable, but incorrect. The correct answer is 31."Charney opines that Holmes, like most people, would have guessed 32, but this is hasty generalization – he can have no inkling what Holmes may or may not have concluded [Silly - Holmes is not like most people. - Ed.]. And why, according to Charney, is the answer 31? Because this is a question about the number of points on a circle, also known as Moser's Circle Problem. The explanation, I suggest, is an attempt to validate a foregone conclusion – the very thing Charney accuses Doyle of doing on behalf of Holmes. Nothing in the evidence militates in favor of 31 as a better solution. An equally likely answer is 28, which we arrive at by skipping the intervening even numbers, increasing the gap by a factor of one odd number each time. (Begin with 2. Skip 0 even numbers. Skip 1 even number. Skip 3 even numbers. Skip 5 even numbers, and so on.) The resulting series of numbers is 2, 4, 8, 16, 28, 42… Here's another option: XX, assuming the letter X was not a variable, but a part of the sequence hiding in plain sight. We add the first and third numbers in the series and express the sum as a Roman numeral (10 = X). We then do the same with the second and fourth numbers (20 = XX). The series is 2, 4, 8, 16, X, XX… The answer could be 9, if we surmise the first four numbers correspond directly to letters of the alphabet. In that case, they spell "BDHP," obviously (by Charney's brand of logic) an abbreviation for Browning Detective Hi Power, a short-barrelled semi-automatic pistol made in the 1990s, in 9mm caliber – a BDHP9. Then again, if numbers stand for letters, letters could stand for numbers, yielding BDHP serial number 24. But perhaps this explanation is flawed, and BDHPX stands for Brian's De Havilland Philharmonic 10th symphony. But I've played the Moffat-and-Gatiss game with you long enough: the true solution is 34, because the numeric sequence is based on Fibonacci. Begin with 2, a Fibonacci number. Double it to get 4. Take the third Fibonacci number from 2, which is 8. Double it to get 16. Take the third Fibonacci number from 8, which is 34. Double it to get 68. Take the third Fibonacci number from 34, which is 144, and so on. The sequence revealed is 2, 4, 8, 16, 34, 68, 144… Such an explanation does violence to Occam's Razor. Charney declares 31 is the right answer because, "the answer we're looking for is 31." A finer example of begging the question might be difficult to imagine, and it comes from the man who accuses Doyle of unfairly setting Holmes up for success. "Because Holmes' fate was in the hands of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," Charney criticizes, "he was set up to always succeed." Unless you count the multiple occassions when Holmes failed. And what of the real-life cases of George Edalji or Oscar Slater, wherein Doyle proved the innocence of two falsely accused men? Who are we t
