What I am attempting to do with these articles, is to explain the current state of affairs in building an accurate and reliable method for calculating the probability of a Bible code matrix.When we say probability of a matrix, we are saying there is a 1 in 10 chance of the matrix occurring randomly, or 1 in 100, or 1 in a 1000, or 1 in a million chance. It gives the viewer a mathematical gauge to determine how important the matrix is and whether it is a chance occurrence or something we'd expect to be found.

Of the 10 Bible code programs available, only 4 of them make any attempt to calculate statistics. They are:
1. CodeFinder: Millennium Edition.
2. Keys to the Bible
3. Bible Search PRO
4. Bible Codes Plus (2000)

The above programs also happen to be the top ranked programs, with CodeFinder: Millennium Edition ranked #1, Keys to the Bible ranked #2 and Bible Search PRO ranked #2A being superior to all other code programs by a significant margin. CodeFinder, Keys to the Bible and Bible Search PRO all calculate the odds for the entire matrix (all 4 calculate expected occurrences).

What are expected occurrences? They are the number of occurrences we would expect to find in a random text based on the distribution of letters in the text. As we decrease the size of the text, the expected occurrences goes down. For example, if our ELS (equidistant letter spacing) search range is 1-1000, and we are looking for forward and reverse occurrences, we would expect to find 3.574 occurrences of the name "Edison" (6 letters in Hebrew) when searching the Torah. If instead of searching the Torah, we decrease the text size to only the book of Genesis, then we would expect to find 1.214 occurrences of Edison using the same ELS range.

CodeFinder: Millennium Edition calculates the expected occurences for each term as you enter it for search, and also calculates the expected occurrences for all terms in subsequent searches. If you use a custom ELS range for each term, it recalculates the expected occurrences based on the new ELS range for that term. When a matrix is displayed, you can right click on a marked letter in the matrix and a cursor tooltip window opens showing the term in Hebrew that contains the letter, in English, the ELS of that term, and the text R-value. Then you can bring up a matrix report that shows all terms in the matrix in Hebrew, in English, the ELS of the term, a text R-value, a matrix R-value, and the book-chapter-verse for the beginning and ending letter of the term in the matrix.

What needs to be explained to people is, what is a text R-value?, what is a matrix R-value?, and how is this useful in gauging the probability of the matrix?

Those questions will be answered in Part 2. As a reminder, the goal is to be able to boil down a matrix to a single mathematical number for probability which takes into account all terms in the matrix. When we look at a matrix, we want to know what the matrix is explaining or showing?, how many terms (words and phrases) are in the matrix (more is better)?, and what is the probability of the matrix?

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