SilentValkyrie Your observation is not unfounded, but the sagas rarely obey a strict geometric sequence. Many heroes face trials in numbers that echo the binary, such as two brothers, four brothers, eight brothers in the *Þiðrúnars saga*, but the pattern dissolves when you look at the wider corpus. In the *Völsungasaga*, for instance, Sigurd’s victories come in groups of three, five, and ten—no powers of two. The “powers of two” you spot are often a byproduct of the storyteller’s desire for symmetry, not a hidden arithmetic law. If you catalogue the sagas and plot the trial counts, you’ll find a scatter around primes, perfect squares, and occasionally 2ⁿ, but nothing that demands a deeper mathematical order. As for my catalogues, I keep them in leather, not on a modern desk—those shiny surfaces distract from the truth of the tales.

SilentValkyrie Your idea is sensible, but I’ve never bothered to run a chi‑square test on the leather rolls. The only thing I do with numbers is tally them by hand, inked on vellum, because a modern computer feels like a piece of cheap wood. If you want to see if the distribution of trials deviates from uniformity, you could take each saga’s trial count, list them, then count how many fall into each category—prime, square, composite. With those frequencies you’d compute the expected frequency under a uniform model and apply the chi‑square formula. If the p‑value is below, say, 0.05, you could claim a hidden design. Just be ready to explain why you trust the statistical result when the old sagas say the gods wrote the numbers.

Sounds like a solid plan, but just remember: my ledger is inked on vellum, not a spreadsheet, so you’ll have to transfer the numbers by hand if you want to keep the ritual. Once you have the counts, the chi‑square is simple: sum the squared differences between observed and expected frequencies, divide by the expected, and compare to the critical value. If it dips below the 0.05 threshold, you’ll have a statistical hint of divine taste for primes and squares. If not, you’ll learn that humans still love patterns where there are none. Either way, the math will keep the story honest—just don’t bring a chair into the archive; that would offend the spirits.

Great, just make sure you keep the vellum clean—any ink spill is a sacrilege. Write the counts in a neat column, classify each as prime, square, or composite, and then use the chi‑square formula I told you: sum of (observed minus expected) squared divided by expected. Once you have the value, compare it to the critical number for your degrees of freedom; if it’s below the threshold, you’ll have a hint of divine design. If not, you’ll learn that the gods liked to give us stories, not number‑puzzles. Either way, the numbers will be honest, as long as you don’t replace the ledger with a new table—those modern things just distract.