Caught accidentally short-faring, any help? [originally "Rights"]

[island]

It's also assumed by some/most lay people that Railway Byelaw offences and/or fare evasion offences are a civil matter and not that serious. Even those in the legal profession often assume this...

And the Times said so yesterday.

 

[andykn]

4. That wrongly named station just happens to have a lower fare than the one you actually boarded at.

Quite the sequence of unfortunate events. :roll:

But if that were totally by chance instead of by design would anyone ever hear of the 50% of wrongly named stations with a higher fare...

 

[najaB]

But if that were totally by chance instead of by design would anyone ever hear of the 50% of wrongly named stations with a higher fare...

Which is why it's part of the sequence of coincidences. To end up in this situation you have to roll seven sixes in a row.

 

[jon0844]

I'm quite amazed at the proportion of 'fare issues' reported in this forum by people who subsequently turn out to be worried about their future career in the law.

Perhaps law schools ought to consider adding a suitable message to their introductory lectures...

The admins here should create a law forum, as it seems most law students end up on here!

 

[Flamingo]

But if that were totally by chance instead of by design would anyone ever hear of the 50% of wrongly named stations with a higher fare...

I'm frequently asked for tickets from a closer station (barriered) that on further discussion turns out to be a "mistake". Sometimes I'm even asked for a ticket from a station we have not even reached yet. I don't think I have ever had anybody ask for a ticket from a further- out station that I knew they could not have got on at.

 

[anme]

Which is why it's part of the sequence of coincidences. To end up in this situation you have to roll seven sixes in a row.

Taken in isolation, this line of reasoning is dangerous. It may be that it requires a long string of relatively unlikely events to take place for someone to end up in this situation. However, 3 million people travel by train every day in the UK (source: Google). Thinking about dice, the chances of rolling seven sixes in a row is 1 in (6 to the power of 7), which is approximately 1 in 280,000. If we got every person who travelled by train in a day to roll a dice seven times, we would expect around 10 of them to roll seven sixes.

Given that so many people use the railway every day, we can expect quite a large number of very unlikely things to happen. Something with a one in a million chance of happening on a single journey will happen to someone on average three times per day. Something with a one in a billion chance will happen about once per year.

To decide whether something is plausible or not, we need to weigh up not only the chances of the event or events happening, but the number of opportunities there are for it to happen. Another example - the chances of a single ticket winning the UK national lottery are around 13 million to 1. That's pretty unlikely, and yet it happens to someone's ticket, or even several people's tickets, most weeks - because so many tickets are sold.

I will leave others to apply this lesson in statistics to the case in question here.

Edit: and getting seriously off topic, here's a link to a very serious miscarriage of justice caused (to some degree) by rather similar reasoning http://www.badscience.net/2010/04/lucia-de-berk-a-martyr-to-stupidity/

 

[Flamingo]

Taken in isolation, this line of reasoning is dangerous. It may be that it requires a long string of relatively unlikely events to take place for someone to end up in this situation. However, 3 million people travel by train every day in the UK (source: Google). Thinking about dice, the chances of rolling seven sixes in a row is 1 in (6 to the power of 7), which is approximately 1 in 280,000. If we got every person who travelled by train in a day to roll a dice seven times, we would expect around 10 of them to roll seven sixes.

Given that so many people use the railway every day, we can expect quite a large number of very unlikely things to happen. Something with a one in a million chance of happening on a single journey will happen to someone on average three times per day. Something with a one in a billion chance will happen about once per year.

To decide whether something is plausible or not, we need to weigh up not only the chances of the event or events happening, but the number of opportunities there are for it to happen. Another example - the chances of a single ticket winning the UK national lottery are around 13 million to 1. That's pretty unlikely, and yet it happens to someone's ticket, or even several people's tickets, most weeks - because so many tickets are sold.

I will leave others to apply this lesson in statistics to the case in question here.

The other thing to put into the equation is that I would put the chance of actually being caught by somebody who had the powers of referral for prosecution as being about the same as being hit by lightening whilst holding your winning lottery ticket. The vast majority of railstaff checking tickets can do no more than sell a new ticket, a significant number not even that.

Circumstantial evidence, if strong enough, is good enough to convict...

 

[DaleCooper]

Taken in isolation, this line of reasoning is dangerous. It may be that it requires a long string of relatively unlikely events to take place for someone to end up in this situation. However, 3 million people travel by train every day in the UK (source: Google). Thinking about dice, the chances of rolling seven sixes in a row is 1 in (6 to the power of 7), which is approximately 1 in 280,000. If we got every person who travelled by train in a day to roll a dice seven times, we would expect around 10 of them to roll seven sixes.

Given that so many people use the railway every day, we can expect quite a large number of very unlikely things to happen. Something with a one in a million chance of happening on a single journey will happen to someone on average three times per day. Something with a one in a billion chance will happen about once per year.

To decide whether something is plausible or not, we need to weigh up not only the chances of the event or events happening, but the number of opportunities there are for it to happen. Another example - the chances of a single ticket winning the UK national lottery are around 13 million to 1. That's pretty unlikely, and yet it happens to someone's ticket, or even several people's tickets, most weeks - because so many tickets are sold.

I will leave others to apply this lesson in statistics to the case in question here.

Edit: and getting seriously off topic, here's a link to a very serious miscarriage of justice caused (to some degree) by rather similar reasoning http://www.badscience.net/2010/04/lucia-de-berk-a-martyr-to-stupidity/

This is a misuse of statistics.

Only a small proportion of the 3 million would be in a position to throw the seven sixes. It only applies to those without a ticket for a start, and those making a journey with intermediate stops, those starting their journey at a station without barriers, those stopped by an RPI etc. etc.

 

[najaB]

Taken in isolation, this line of reasoning is dangerous. It may be that it requires a long string of relatively unlikely events to take place for someone to end up in this situation...

If they were independent, random events I would agree with you but choosing not to buy a ticket before you travel is a conscious decision. Naming a station is a conscious decision, etc.

 

[anme]

This is a misuse of statistics.

Only a small proportion of the 3 million would be in a position to throw the seven sixes. It only applies to those without a ticket for a start, and those making a journey with intermediate stops, those starting their journey at a station without barriers, those stopped by an RPI etc. etc.

If they were independent, random events I would agree with you but choosing not to buy a ticket before you travel is a conscious decision. Naming a station is a conscious decision, etc.

I suggest you apply these observations to the original argument about coincidences. My post was attempting - successfully it seems from these posts - to raise some concerns with that line of reasoning. These concerns might work both ways, of course.

 

[najaB]

I suggest you apply these observations to the original argument about coincidences. My post was attempting - successfully it seems from these posts - to raise some concerns with that line of reasoning. These concerns might work both ways, of course.

You may have missed the point - most of these posters are guilty as heck and want us to believe that they are the victim of coincdence. I don't care how scared, tired, confused, intimidated you are: when someone asks what station you boarded at I can't believe that the only station that pops into your head is one that just happens to be half the fare of the one you actually boarded at. In a lot of cases, they actually attempt to buy a ticket from this intermediate station. This is, of course, despite usually claiming either:

• They make the same journey every day and this is the one time they've forgotten to buy a ticket. If you make the same journey every day, how comes you can't remember the station you board at, every day? Or;
• It's the first time they've ever made the journey. In which case, how comes you know the names of stations along the route?

As flamingo has pointed out, he gets the same thing while doing revenue duties on the train, with people claiming to have boarded at a station that the train hasn't even reached yet!

 

[anme]

You may have missed the point - most of these posters are guilty as heck and want us to believe that they are the victim of coincdence. I don't care how scared, tired, confused, intimidated you are: when someone asks what station you boarded at I can't believe that the only station that pops into your head is one that just happens to be half the fare of the one you actually boarded at. (snipped)

You may have missed the point of my post. I was pointing out some implications of a line of reasoning based on probabilities (or coincidences, if you prefer). If you believe it's impossible that someone can incorrectly state the station they boarded at by mistake - i.e. the probability of that is zero - then indeed we don't need to consider probability theory. I'm not commenting on that point.

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Taken in isolation, this line of reasoning is dangerous. It may be that it requires a long string of relatively unlikely events to take place for someone to end up in this situation. However, 3 million people travel by train every day in the UK (source: Google). Thinking about dice, the chances of rolling seven sixes in a row is 1 in (6 to the power of 7), which is approximately 1 in 280,000. If we got every person who travelled by train in a day to roll a dice seven times, we would expect around 10 of them to roll seven sixes. . . . .

. . . . Half way through your second sentence I guessed where this was going.
This line of reasoning isn't dangerous - it's just innapropriate and doesn't merit analysis.
A passenger forgetting the name of the station at which they boarded when asked isn't rolling odds of 1 in six.
Giving the name of a station nearer their destination isn't rolling odds of 1 in six.
The fare being cheaper from the nearer station isn't rolling odds of 1 in six.

The appropriate use of this analogy is the use to which it is put. It is to demonstrate to the unfortunate passenger, who is already in this position (having rolled their imaginary dice), but hasn't yet given their account of the situation to the investigating officer, how their letter may be viewed by that experienced railway Investigator. They are already considering writing it in the way they have presented their description of the incident on here. It will be read by an Investigator who reads many very similar reports from passengers every day, and who, if it wasn't for what the passenger makes out to be coincidences, might suspect there is a grain of dishonesty somewhere in their account of the incident.

If we're going to look at numerical probabilities, then we'd better use the right numbers - and they won't be sixes. I think the number of pax who forget where they boarded might be closer to 1 in a few thousand.

And then, there's two more numbers to add in as a factor:-

1. Having detected, say, a hundred ticketless passenger who forgot their station of origin in this way, and who had named one with a cheaper fare, followed by a letter explaining the exceptional reasons for this uncharacteristic blunder - what proportion of these 100 passengers do you expect might have been intending to avoid their fare? And what proportion will have an extraordinary but entirely true explanation for their mistake?
One? Less than one?
And what proportion of those 100 letters will admit to their intention to avoid their fare?
More than one?

2. The crucial factor, the intelligence which led the Company to expend all those resources being applied to investigating fare evasion on a particular route at a particular time. The fact that the head counts and the ticket sales on some journeys are so clearly at a massive variance - as much as 90% undersold on some journeys. There's the real statistical target we should be looking at.

I will leave others to apply this lesson in statistics to the case in question here.

Not me, and I hope no one else on here!

. . . . here's a link to a very serious miscarriage of justice caused (to some degree) by rather similar reasoning http://www.badscience.net/2010/04/lucia-de-berk-a-martyr-to-stupidity/

You know what?
It's not even remotely comparable. Another example of an innapropriate metaphor.

That case is a prosecution based on two errors, one is conflating correspondence with causality, and the other is in multiplying statistics.
What we are looking at is a passenger who is considering adding to the pile of letters written to a Railway Investigator which appear to be lies.
They appear to be lies, not because of the details of the coincidences, but because of the facts of ticket sales. The story of coincidences just makes the passenger look like someone desperately trying to redescribe the past in the hope that they can make someone believe an alternative version of the past, and thereby change the future. It's the fare-evading passenger with false explanation who is failing to grasp the statistical context. Not the Prosecutor.

If a passenger had a good reason for not being able to produce a valid ticket then they would probably be articulate enough to demonstrate it. And it is unlikely, to the extent of beggaring belief, that extraordinary coincidences occur to a Railway operator's passengers only on the occasions when the company attempts to identify their fare evaders, but that they all occur on days when their passengers have unremarkable days.

If you want a statistical metaphor then perhaps you could start with the statistics of fare evasion?

Having said all that, I'm not aware of a single Railway fare evasion case where the Prosecuting Company has attempted to apply any of these statistical processes as evidence in a prosecution; it has only been used in their strategies for deploying their resources in detecting evasion.

 

[sheff1]

Which is why it's part of the sequence of coincidences. To end up in this situation you have to roll seven sixes in a row.

If they were independent, random events I would agree with you but choosing not to buy a ticket before you travel is a conscious decision. Naming a station is a conscious decision, etc.

I, too, am struggling to reconcile the above. Rolling seven sixes is a series of independent random events.

 

[najaB]

I, too, am struggling to reconcile the above. Rolling seven sixes is a series of independent random events.

It's an analogy - I was going to write 'ducks in a row' rather than 'rolling sixes', but wrote it from the 'unlucky passenger's perspective.

The idea is that the passenger expects us to believe that they are the victim of bad luck (they imply that they've rolled sixes) when in fact they are in the situation not due to luck but bad decision making. One recent thread was even titled 'Just bad luck' until the mods changed the title to something more accurate.

 

[andykn]

Which is why it's part of the sequence of coincidences. To end up in this situation you have to roll seven sixes in a row.

Indeed, and the odds are identical to rolling six sixes followed by a one. But that's not as remarkable so we wouldn't get to hear about it.

 

[Llanigraham]

Anme,
There is a neat little saying:
"Lies, damned lies....................and statistics"

 

[RJ]

I'm frequently asked for tickets from a closer station (barriered) that on further discussion turns out to be a "mistake". Sometimes I'm even asked for a ticket from a station we have not even reached yet. I don't think I have ever had anybody ask for a ticket from a further- out station that I knew they could not have got on at.

In some situations, people could benefit from doing that. For example, arriving ticketless at Euston, someone who travelled from Northampton could claim they travelled from Rugby. Rugby has cheaper Super Off Peak fares which are not available from Northampton.

 

[Flamingo]

I worked two trains last Saturday, both trains were busy so I saw, at a conservative estimate, approximately 1000 tickets. I only found two (separate) passengers with no tickets between both trains. I had to waken both (the only two I had to waken out of the thousand-odd I saw all day). Both of them asked for a ticket from the last station. When asked how they got through the barriers, both of them then decided (eventually) they were confused after waking up and had got on at an earlier (unbarriered) station. When asked why they hadn't bought before boarding, both said "I was running for the train".

Lots of coincidences there, but of course I can't possibly infer anything from this..

 

[sarahj]

I worked two trains last Saturday, both trains were busy so I saw, at a conservative estimate, approximately 1000 tickets. I only found two (separate) passengers with no tickets between both trains. I had to waken both (the only two I had to waken out of the thousand-odd I saw all day). Both of them asked for a ticket from the last station. When asked how they got through the barriers, both of them then decided (eventually) they were confused after waking up and had got on at an earlier (unbarriered) station. When asked why they hadn't bought before boarding, both said "I was running for the train".

Lots of coincidences there, but of course I can't possibly infer anything from this..

The problem with some when they lie and you know they are, they get into a strop as they try to keep it up. Came from Brighton, how did you get through the barriers, err they let me through. i doubt that, err they did. i was late for the train. So how come I was standing there and did not see you run, plus there is another train 6 mins after this one. errr, errr.

Or in another case, well I came from Hove, but I had a ticket, lets see the ticket. right, hove to preston park. If your going to Clapham junction, why buy a ticket to preston park?. errr, well :roll:

 

[Geronimo]

Anme,
There is a neat little saying:
"Lies, damned lies....................and statistics"

Which applies to the "Naive, gullible ......... and poorly educated"

Anyway, what was mentioned was "probability", quite different from "statistics".

OT, I know, but pedantry seems positively encouraged on these board.

 

[Flamingo]

In some situations, people could benefit from doing that. For example, arriving ticketless at Euston, someone who travelled from Northampton could claim they travelled from Rugby. Rugby has cheaper Super Off Peak fares which are not available from Northampton.

I'm sure it can happen, and I'll occasionally get asked for a longer ticket as somebody will be travelling back further on their return journey. But I've never had somebody say "I got on at X" and then say "Oh no, I got on at Y today"...

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but in ten years I can never remember it...

 

[joke2711]

I'm sure it can happen, and I'll occasionally get asked for a longer ticket as somebody will be travelling back further on their return journey. But I've never had somebody say "I got on at X" and then say "Oh no, I got on at Y today"...

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but in ten years I can never remember it...

I once had an unpleasant encounter with an Arriva Trains Wales Guard, travelling from Warrington to Chester. Warrington Bank Quay ticket office was closed on the Sunday Evening and I only had cash No direct trains were running directly to Chester that evening and it was a Virgin service to Crewe and then an Arriva Service Crewe to Chester. I didn't see the train manager on the Virgin Service to Crewe, and on arrival crossed straight for a departing train to Chester. I had money in my hand ready as I could hear the guard coming through the carriage and when he got to me I asked for single from Warrington Bank Quay to Chester - at the time this was £7.20 compared to a £10 single from Crewe (although I wasn't aware of this at the time). The guard questioned my ticket request and didn't want to believe I had travelled from Warrington. He said that he would charge me £10 for a Crewe - Chester single. I refused this and re-stated my request for a single from Warrington. Fortunately there was another passenger close by who had travelled from Glasgow and had seen me on the Virgin train, it was only once they mentioned that they were on the same train as me the guard backed down.

Great Customer Service and not a nice scene in a packed railway compartment!

 

[DaleCooper]

I once had an unpleasant encounter with an Arriva Trains Wales Guard, travelling from Warrington to Chester. Warrington Bank Quay ticket office was closed on the Sunday Evening and I only had cash No direct trains were running directly to Chester that evening and it was a Virgin service to Crewe and then an Arriva Service Crewe to Chester. I didn't see the train manager on the Virgin Service to Crewe, and on arrival crossed straight for a departing train to Chester. I had money in my hand ready as I could hear the guard coming through the carriage and when he got to me I asked for single from Warrington Bank Quay to Chester - at the time this was £7.20 compared to a £10 single from Crewe (although I wasn't aware of this at the time). The guard questioned my ticket request and didn't want to believe I had travelled from Warrington. He said that he would charge me £10 for a Crewe - Chester single. I refused this and re-stated my request for a single from Warrington. Fortunately there was another passenger close by who had travelled from Glasgow and had seen me on the Virgin train, it was only once they mentioned that they were on the same train as me the guard backed down.

Great Customer Service and not a nice scene in a packed railway compartment!

Shouldn't you have bought a ticket at Crewe,, thereby avoiding the situation?

 

[joke2711]

Shouldn't you have bought a ticket at Crewe,, thereby avoiding the situation?

Lol and then I would have missed my train even if the Crewe ticket office was open! 12 minute connection and train arrived 7 late if I remember correctly.

 

[Merseysider]

Shouldn't you have bought a ticket at Crewe,, thereby avoiding the situation?

No requirement documented anywhere in the NRCoC or elsewhere for passengers to miss connections as a result of a TOC not offering tickets for sale at the journey origin.

 

[najaB]

OT, I know, but pedantry seems positively encouraged on these board.

I, for one, salute your dedication to pedantry.

 

[Geronimo]

And the Times said so yesterday.

That sounds interesting, but is a bit cryptic, could you please elaborate?

 

[bb21]

I once had an unpleasant encounter with an Arriva Trains Wales Guard, travelling from Warrington to Chester. Warrington Bank Quay ticket office was closed on the Sunday Evening and I only had cash

Didn't the TVMs at Bank Quay take cash seeing that it is a Virgin-run station?

 

[PermitToTravel]

Do all Virgin TVMs take cash? Theirs at Manchester don't, but it's not a problem there as Northern's do