Summary

Brother Juniper had long been convinced that proof was needed to support his concept of faith. An outbreak of pestilence gave him an opportunity to gain a statistical analysis to support his theory. He chose 15 victims and, as controls, 15 survivors of the illness. On a scale of 1 to 10 he rated each person for their goodness, for their piety and for their usefulness to the community. He found there were no indispensable persons; all were necessary to the economy of their community. He made a statistical analysis, but was confounded when his results showed that those who had died were five times more worthy than those who were spared. He concluded the discrepancy between faith and fact was greater than was generally assumed.

Brother Juniper pursued his studies after the collapse of the bridge and found so much trivia he could not analyze that he decided to...