Where You Hit It

Dead reaction-diffusion fields can sometimes be revived by an identical scatter of twenty-four small strikes -- and sometimes not. Three sessions of honest arithmetic asked whether WHERE the strikes land decides it: eight geometric features, growing sample sizes, finally a cross-validated classifier. The classifier scored worse than refusing to look at all. A piece about a preserved negative result: the information either isn't in the placement, or is written too finely for those eight words to read.