Official News page 4

WHETHER THE WEATHERMEN BE HOT...

by Hazed

Not a day goes by, not a single day, but they're out there blowing something up. Those Weathermen are an active lot! They move from star system to star system, destroying weather control centers in the furtherance of their crackpot aims (see the entry in the Encyclopedia Galactica for the details of those aims).

They are so active that some people wonder if its worth building weather control stations at all. To answer that question, I thought that some statistical analysis was needed, to try to identify any pattern in the Weathermen Cult's attacks. I called on the services of Professor Magnitudia Bluff of the Galactic Institute of Statistics and Damned Lies, and asked her to turn her oversized brain to the problem. Which she did. I have her report here, and I have to say, it's an absolute masterpiece - at least, that's what she told me, but I can't understand a word of it. Not one of the words in it is less than five syllables long.

She was kind enough to include a summary written in layperson's language, which I can just about understand. I will attempt to translate it into the kind of thing that the average reader of the Star can comprehend.

It appears that there is a 1% chance of the Weathermen striking your planet if you have any weather control stations. That chance remains the same regardless of how many you have, so building more than one doesn't make you any choicer a target. It follows, then, that if you are going to have any weather control stations, you might as well have a full complement of five to get maximum benefit.

Whether it's worth risking their ire at all is up to you - you need to balance up the cost of the build against the benefits (see the information in the Idiot's Guide) and then remember that a 1% chance means that although you could go for more than 100 days without getting hit, you might be unlucky and get a visit from Met's people on the first day!

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