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The Math Behind 1&2 Corinthians

4/12/2017

2 Comments

 
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Congratulations! By now most of you have completed the Bible Quiz season that covered the Gospel of Luke. As a faithful reader of this blog, I’m sure you prepared for the season by reading 1 chapter of Luke as part of your daily time in the Word during the summer. When the season started you set up a dedicated study area where you blocked off time to study in 25-minute chunks with 5-minute breaks every night immediately before you went to bed and got plenty of sleep. You followed a plan that varied what you studied every day to prevent mid-season burnout. You used the NPH Bible Quiz App to take advantage of the idle moments that happen randomly throughout your day. You asked others to hold you accountable and you rewarded yourself for achieving your study goals.  You dedicated yourself to learning 2 Memory Verses a week because you know it is the practically guaranteed* way to be a top 10 Bible Quizzer. But most importantly, as you read Luke God revealed Himself to you through the Scripture. With God’s leading, you are finding direction for your life and learning how to best serve the Lord who gave His life for you.
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And now here you are. Relieved that you made it through the longest book of the 8-year Youth Bible Quiz cycle. You are looking forward to the relative ease of studying 1 & 2 Corinthians next season.
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So to help you prepare after you return from your summer break, here is a brief statistical analysis of the upcoming quiz material:

Do More With Less

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The 29 chapters of 1 & 2 Corinthians contain 693 total verses, compared to the 1,151 verses in Luke. And as you would expect, the 1 & 2 Corinthian chapters are shorter: 24 verses per chapter compared to Luke’s 48 verses per chapter.

Breaking it down ever further, 1 & 2 Corinthians contains 11,306 total words while Luke has 19,482 words. That’s 42% fewer words! Theoretically, that’s 42% less time necessary to read through the material the same number of times. So what will you do with that extra 42% of time? Oh, I don’t know, maybe spend it memorizing a verse or two? Just a thought.
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BONUS STAT: At the average reading speed of 200 words per minute, it should only take 57 minutes to read the entirety of 1 & 2 Corinthians!

Memory Verses - Now with extra frequency!

The 86 memory verses in 1 & 2 Corinthians span 112 total verses when you consider those that cover multiple verses. Whereas the Luke memory verses represented 9% of that scripture, these 112 verses embody 16% of the 1 & 2 Corinthians material. What that means is more questions in a game will be based on a memory verse. In fact, super fancy math calculates an average of 6 questions each game will be derived from a memory verse this coming season. That’s 27% more frequent than last season! So if you were considering learning memory verses, this is a great quiz season to do so.

BONUS STAT: Averaging 28 words per verse, the 1 & 2 Corinthian memory verses are about 8% shorter than the Luke memory verses.​

The Word on Pre-Jumps

​The odds are in your favor if you prejump on Memory Verses this year. Check this out:
  • 28 (or 33%) of Memory Verses are unique with the first word
  • 49 (or 57%) of Memory Verses are unique at the second word
  • 7 (or 8%) of Memory Verses are unique at the third word
  • 2 (or 2%) of Memory Verses are unique at the fourth word
A study published by the Scientific American determined a typical person’s reaction time to be approximately 300 milliseconds, or 0.3 seconds. Now consider that the National Center for Voice and Speech (yes, there is such a thing) determined the average speed of spoken words while reading is about 160 words per minute, or 2.7 words per second. That means the Quizmaster is likely to bleed 0.8 words after hearing the equipment beep from a quizzer jumping early. (I’m not even going to attempt to determine the average delay from when the quizzer jumps to when the computer actually beeps. I’ve seen that lag be as much as several seconds!).

So if you jump as the Quizmaster is opening their mouth to form the first word of the verse, you’d likely get to hear most of the first word and have a 33% chance of it being unique to a single memory verse. If you wait until the first half of the first word is spoken, you’d likely hear enough of a second word and have a 90% chance of identifying the memory verse!

What are the odds of all 3 memory verses in a game being those that are not unique until the third or fourth word? Only 0.1%! That’s once every 1,000 games.

Conversely, there is a 71% chance that all 3 memory verses in a game will be unique by at least the second word! So go ahead and jump early!

Conclusion

For now, take a break from studying for quizzing to recharge your batteries. Enjoy your summer. But stay in the Word by reading 1 chapter of 1 & 2 Corinthians as part of your morning routine. That way, the words will be familiar to you when you are ready to begin studying for competition in the fall. ​
2 Comments
Debby
4/13/2018 07:16:03 am

Is there a new blog on the math behind John. :)

Reply
David
5/10/2018 11:40:41 am

Yes, there is!
http://www.teenbiblequiz.com/home/the-statistical-risk-and-reward-of-memory-verses-in-john

Reply



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