今天从网上看到新闻说湖北经适房摇出14连号，具体就是从1138人中摇出514名购房者，其中出现了14名连号的，武汉某大学的教授算出的结果大概是百分之一点多，在概率论上并不属于小概率事件，然后网上某些论坛就是一片骂声，如果说骂得言之有理那还罢了，很多千奇百怪的计算公式都冒了出来，有些拿着自己算出的错的离谱的结果振振有词的大骂，实在有点看不下去了。

其实这是一道并不算复杂的概率题，在1到1138个数字中抽出514人且至少有一个14连号（包括超过14连号）的概率是，1125*combin(1124，500)/combin(1138, 514)，结果大约是1.5%。

我在这并不是要为政府或者专家教授辩护，1.5%的概率看来的确不大，但还并不能属于很小的概率，至于网上那些个算出几亿分之一  几十亿分之一的，只能是让人哭笑不得。

批评 监督政府是必需的，但是没有个solid的argument而只是自己的胡思乱想的话，那就只会让人感到可笑，让被批评的人有口实来反驳。 再联想到最近杭州“胡斌案”传出的替身的说法，更让人感到有些可悲，一方面是为政府公信力的丧失，另一方面是为网上不负责任肆意捏造的帖子以及那么多”打酱油”的围观群众对此还深信不疑，难道真的是they just wanna believe what they believe吗？我现在对“谣言止于智者”这句话越来越没有信心了，网络上很多事情分明就是“谎言重复了一千遍就是真理”。

建议大家有空读读

My Han Relatives’ View From Xinjiang

Yan Sun, a native of Sichuan, has lived in the United States since 1985 and
been a professor of political science at the City University of New York
since 1992. She has also written “A Sichuan Family and Tibet’s Future.”


After arriving at the home of my parents in Chongqing on July 7, I asked my
mother how many relatives we still had in Xinjiang and how they were doing
lately. Ten families of close relatives, she said, and several more distant
ones. Some were born and raised in Xinjiang, but the majority migrated there
in the 1960s and 1970s from the Sichuan countryside. The sole reason was to
get out of the poor farmland and have a chance at becoming urban residents.
They were introduced to Xinjiang by an aunt who was assigned there in the
1950s but had managed to bring her family back to Sichuan in the 1980s.

My relatives mostly see “outside forces” as the main reason for the latest
as well as other riots in Xinjiang in recent years.
I scrambled to reach some of them by phone and talk to them candidly about
the issues that are often cited in the Western media as responsible for
growing ethnic divide and tensions between the Uighur and Han Chinese. Some
of my cited reasons took them by surprise; others made them laugh. With
their decades of life and work in an austere region, I have little reason to
dispute them. As a social scientist, it is fascinating for me to learn
about their perspective on the deeper roots of the recent riots. After all,
they were supposed to be the very source and targets of local grievance.

Without any need to repeat government accounts to me, my relatives mostly
see “outside forces” as the main reason for the latest as well as other
riots in Xinjiang in recent years. Citing long-term good friendship with
local Muslims, they are hard-pressed to think of divisions serious enough to
cause deadly riots. Rather, they claim to have seen outside influences at
work from their own experience, e.g., money for underground mosques where
mullahs engage in inciting rhetoric, for “terrorist groups” that make
explosives and bombs, or for restless Muslim youths who stage trouble on the
streets. They also see a pattern of Uighur separatist forces imitating the
tactics of Tibetan exiles, namely, phrasing issues in terms that appeal to
Western sensibilities, such as religious freedom, cultural and linguistic
preservation, ethnic equality or territorial autonomy.

But aren’t there problems in these areas? My relatives were unanimous in
their view that state policies are already tilted in favor of local ethnics.
Freedom of religion? My relatives see the state restrictions are
justifiable: no mosques for those under 18 because they are not mature
enough to have good judgment, and no mosque attendance for those holding
government jobs. The state does send an (Uighur) official as a liaison with
the mosques on a weekly basis, but again this is seen as justifiable since
the state funds helped with their construction and to pay the mullahs’
salaries. Why not let them fund on their own? The answer is that outside
religious forces would otherwise fund them. Having read about how foreign-
financed madrassahs spring up and spread in western Pakistan, I am hard-
pressed to pass judgment here.

How about the imposition of Chinese language instruction in schools? This
was news to my relatives. They grew up attending separate schools from their
Uighur peers, where different languages were used in instruction. Some
Uighurs chose to attend Han Chinese schools for career benefits. Only since
2005 has bilingual education been introduced in public schools in Xinjiang.
Most technical colleges use Chinese in instruction, because of available
resources, while colleges for ethnic nationalities instruct in minority
languages. Rather than seeing bilingual education as forced assimilation, my
relatives see it as a good skill to have in the job market, because many
modern-sector jobs will involve interaction with Han Chinese in and out of
Xinjiang. For their part, my Xinjiang cousins speak enough Uighur to
communicate with Uighurs on a daily basis, and tell me that they live more
like Uighurs than Han Chinese, enjoying mutton more than pork.

What about widened income gaps between Han Chinese and Uighur Muslims in the
market economy? My relatives cite different attitudes toward education,
achievement and life. This is where some “racist” assessments may be found
, if they may be so-called: nomadic traditions do not value sending kids to
schools, but rather roaming around or bathing in the sun; nor do they
prioritize professional and material pursuits like the Han Chinese, or hard
work or long-term planning for this world, but rather satisfaction in the
spiritual world, etc. These are the contrasts I have learned in Western
social sciences — conflicts between pre-modern and modern values, religious
and secular cultures, or an achievement and non-achievement ethic. So it is
hard for me to pass judgment here as well except to urge Han Chinese to
loosen up and enjoy life a little as our ethnic brothers do.

What about the squeezing of Uighurs in their own native land by growing Han
presence? Is that occupation or colonialism? These lines usually shocked my
relatives. One aunt, a college professor who spent three decades in Khotan
of southern Xinjiang, gave me a history lesson about how Xinjiang came under
Chinese control in the Han Dynasty in the 200s B.C. and remained so on and
off till the Manchu Dynasty finally consolidated Chinese rule in the 1770s.
Xinjiang was loose whenever China was weak internally and its rulers were
preoccupied elsewhere.

But successive rulers always reasserted control and sovereignty. Another
aunt who had lived in a Tibetan region called the Chinese nation a melting
pot of different ethnic groups over millenniums. Citing our own ancestors
who had migrated to Sichuan generations back, my mother recalls her
grandmother as one with white skin and yellow hair, possible of Turkic
origin herself from western China.

Are there government policies on minority regions responsible for increasing
ethnic tensions? Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly for someone familiar
with America’s ethnic politics), some of my relatives fault the government
’s preferential policies for helping to enhance ethnic identity and
entitlement for minorities. Uighurs with disciplinary problems or criminal
offenses are treated leniently, they say. In matters of employment,
appointment and promotion in the public sector, Uighurs may be preferred
over (perceived) more qualified Han candidates. “Reverse discrimination”
in college admissions and population policies are other areas of Han
complaints. While Han Chinese can have only one child, Uighurs receive
honorary and monetary rewards for stopping at three, along with yearly
bonuses. Whether legitimate or not, such complaints make it difficult for
Han Chinese to appreciate Uighur grievances.

Do they think the World Uighur Congress and its exiled leader, Rebiya Radeer
, were behind the recent riots? My older relatives from Xinjiang recalled
Soviet instigations of Uighur separatism in the 30s and during the cold war,
so they said they would not be surprised by any outside support for the W.U
.C. or Radeer. Younger relatives point to the U.S. — not the U.S. per se
but to the exploitation of U.S. apprehension over anything Beijing does and
of U.S. sympathies for any group that Beijing opposes. The real point of
staging riots inside China, they assert, is that they enable the exiled
groups to survive and thrive. So they expect such riots for years to come.