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c 08 o.2 o ,1–2 detail. 1, the typographic by No. 2, published Vol. article 2008, original Statistics the Mathematical of of reprint Institute electronic an is This DTRA:SAITC N TELS OBO ” OF TOMB LOST “THE AND STATISTICS EDITORIAL: nttt fMteaia Statistics Mathematical of Institute n18,acntuto rwwrigi h euae neighb the in working crew construction a 1980, In Are analysis? statistical for suitable problem a makes What 1 ai “docudrama” television a when 2007, March to forward Fast taotti ie eevre umte ae to paper a submitted Feuerverger time, this about At eevdJnay20;rvsdJnay2008. January revised 2008; January Received TeLs obo Jesus.” of Tomb Lost “The 10.1214/08-AOAS162 1996 u hr eot i o eev iepedpbi attent public widespread receive not did reports there but ) AA)frrve,btiscnet eandconfiden- remained contents its but review, for (AOAS) trbtdto attributed nild“h otTm fJesus” of Tomb Lost “The entitled hsrpitdffr rmteoiia npgnto and pagination in original the from differs reprint This . ySehnE Fienberg E. Stephen By angeMlo University Mellon Carnegie 2008 , icvr Channel Discovery . h ttsiinAde eevre:“that Feuerverger: Andrey statistician the 2007 in h naso ple Statistics Applied of Annals The 1 ] ecie h rdsoey fthe of “rediscovery” the described )], ac ,2007. 4, March , uain?Sc issues Such culations? 1 oce ffapublic a off touched u rdto,and tradition, ous http://dsc.discovery. hooia finds? cheological aesadthe and Papers t uhquestions such e ean found remains e swspublicly was ns h nasof Annals The n million.” one n eewsasta- a was hese oe,known boxes, l salAntiqui- ain fthe of tations et e why see to le 1994 l published sly siin and isticians dreligious nd inscriptions e1i 600, in 1 re e on red rodof orhood , historical n by and ) The ion. 2 S. F. FIENBERG available [Mims (2007)]. Commentary regarding Feuerverger’s statistical cal- culation quickly appeared on the web. Was it really a Bayesian calculation? On what assumptions were the statistical arguments based? Most criticism focused not directly on the actual statistical arguments but on how they were portrayed by the documentary’s producers and interpreted by others. And the controversy over the broader interpretation and claims regarding the origin of the East raged on. In July 2007 at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Salt Lake City, Feuerverger gave the first public airing of the details of his work and three discussants presented alternative perspectives. The paper itself underwent an extensive review process and a substantially revised version appears in this issue of AOAS [Feuerverger (2008)]. It includes photographs, detailed discussion of possible data on names from ancient sources, the assumptions upon which the analysis was based, and a novel p-value calculation. The paper is ac- companied by a series of detailed discussions and critiques, several of which reframe the statistical problem from a Bayesian perspective. The AOAS editors encourage our readers to judge for themselves the per- suasiveness of the assumptions, the data, and the calculations performed by Feuerverger, especially in light of the criticisms voiced in the extended dis- cussion that follows his paper, and his response. Interested readers may then wish to explore the extensive nonstatistical discussion of the East Talpiot available in print and on the web.

REFERENCES Feuerverger, A. (2008). Statistical analysis of an archeological find (with discussion). Ann. Appl. Statist. 2 3–54. Jacobovici, S. and Pellegrino, C. (2007). The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History. Harperone, New York. Kloner, A. (1996). A tomb with inscribed ossuaries in East Talpiyot, Jerusalem. Atiqot 29 15–22. Mims, C. (2007). Q&A with the statistician who calculated the odds that this tomb belonged to Jesus. Scientific American In Focus, March 2, 2007. Available at http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=13C42878-E7F2-99DF-3B6D16A9656A12FF. Rahmani, L. Y. (1994). A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel. Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem.

Department of Statistics and Machine Learning Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 USA E-mail: fi[email protected]