Statistics

Genesis 7-9 and Matthew 3 are today's passages from Biblegateway.com, and the math I notice is a very basic, foundational, introduction to statistics.  Statistics is the science of learning from data, and of measuring, controlling, and communicating uncertainty; and it thereby provides the navigation essential for controlling the course of scientific and societal advances (Davidian, M. and Louis, T. A., 10.1126/science.1218685). Statistical thinking and methods are applied daily to a wide variety of scientific, social, and business endeavors in areas like astronomy, biology, education, economics, genetics, and so on.

There are four terms used to describe types of data: nominal (name only), ordinal (a natural ordering), interval (like ordinal, except with measurable values) and ratio (interval with an actual zero). In the scripture text we can find all these types of data.  For instance animals taken on the ark were classified as clean or not clean.  This is a nominal classification. When God gave Noah the 'go ahead' to leave the ark, and He promised Noah that as long as the earth remained there would be "seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night." This information is ordinal.  The events of the flood (building the ark, the loading, the waiting, the deluge, the waiting, etc.) are actually interval.  If you give dates to Noah's call and all the individual events after his entering into the ark and until leaving the ark, this information becomes ratio.

As I read through these scriptures to the departure from the ark, Genesis 8:19 tells me that everything "went forth by families out of the ark."  As I continued reading into the next day's passages, I found that in chapter 10, the descriptions of Noah's sons were given by "their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations."  This made me consider sampling techniques in statistics.  There are five main ways to sample a population.  They are random, cluster, convenience, stratified and systematic.  I might simply observe here that nothing God plans or executes is random or done for convenience.  God is methodical and orderly, so His labels are stratified, and His methods are systematic.

Paul said in Ephesians 3, "To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places."  Although I feel it is the responsibility of all believers to 'preach' the unsearchable riches of Christ, I must admit that my chosen method is through proclaiming the beauty of mathematics that God mysteriously hid in His Word.