Skyscript Astrology Forum

One way to mitigate the rounding issue is to eliminate all charts that have birth times ending with X:Y0 and X:Y5.

Warning: this will still create a biased sample, as we are eliminating rounded charts and non-rounded charts. However, this bias probably does not affect the representativeness of the sample.

I think our population for this research is "all accurate birth charts with sufficiently known life events", and eliminating the charts would not affect the representativeness of the sample too much, although the proportion of the charts would definitely change. However, we should keep in mind that in the first place, the collection was never a random sample, so even if we did not eliminate rounded charts, it may still be biased in some way.

Atlantean, let's assume that hospital records >>> official birth certificates (in places that collect them nowadays) may be rounded to the nearest five minutes.

With Method #1 (recommended in my first post one p. 1, above,) only people with known birth times would be admitted to the sample. If their birth time in muinutes were a multiple of 5, only those with birth times at 05, 25, 35, and 55 minutes after the hour would be accepted. Otherwise we could introduce a bigger rounding error of the hospital were rounding to 10- or 15-minute intervals. Obviously if someone has a birth time in minutes that is not a multiple of 5, (like 3:21) we would assume that it was not rounded, and could include them.

Since it is possible that the nurse with the stop-watch could have made a slight mistake, as well, probably we don't need to insist in advance upon 100% perfect match-ups between the rectified time and the recorded time. If a birth certificate shows 3:21 and you peg it at 3:23, that would be within the allowable margin.

Of course if you can get a good sample of people from India, chances are their birth times were recorded accurately.

Then you crunch whatever dates and data you want from these people with your Polaris software. Getting a rectified birth time within 5 minutes of the official birth times would be seen as close enough to validate the software.

In statistics (in whch I am not expert, but took a course in it once eons ago) you also don't expect that 100% of your sample will show the predicted result. The reasons could be data errors, or possibly some individuals are special unique cases for some reason. If you interview 25 people and 24 of them produce stellar (pun intended) results, then you are onto something.

In Method #2 (Astro-Databank or its equivalent) it would work the same way. Since you don't want anyone to suggest you might be biased if you did the study solo, your trusty research assistant would develop a list of Rodden AA celebrity charts, in which the types of data you would request could be found via abundant published material on the sample. Any celebrities whose birth minutes were divisible by 5 would be screened out unless those minutes were not divisible by 10 or 15, leaving you with allowable minutes of 05, 25, 35, and 55.

Again, we have to assume that unless were considering the child of famous parents, nobody knew at birth that the newborn was going to be famous. Although famous people are biased in some way (talent, good looks, income) vs. the larger Joe Average population, this is not a bias that should affect chart rectification, so far as I can determine.

I don't think it would be difficult to find a decent sample in the Astro-DataBank. For example, if you start with the last name of letter S, this surname is essentially random with respect to rectifying a birth chart. Ditto for a sample of people born in the 1950s.

We don't have to demonstrate that the sample is unbiased relative to some consideration that is actually irrelevant to the problem of pegging a birth time.

Incidentally, I was sufficiently impressed at one point by the Gauquelin studies, that when I wanted to see whether Neptune and Venus were prominent in the charts of artists, I decided to look at French-born painters, given the French practice of recording official birth times by mid-19th century. Imagine my surprise when I found that they were rounded to the nearest hour until the 1920s and 30s!

Again, you'd have to allow for some margin of error. But if your rectified birth time were within 5 minutes of the recorded birth time, and you did this as a ocmpletely "blind" study, we'd have to conclude you had a really stellar system.

This would not, strictly speaking, be a statistical study so far as I can make out, as statistical methods generally specify the minimum required sample size. The advantage of statistics, further, is that you can calculate the probability that your results were a matter of random chance, which you could set at a very strict level.

Atlantean, I just did a quick scan of the Astro-DataBank, checking merely the first celebrities who came into my head, and skipped any without a Rodden AA rating or with birth time minutes divisible by 10 or 15. I came up with the following in the space of 10 minutes:

Barack Obama: 19:24 (the Hawaiian birth certificate, for your birthers out there! )

Meryl Streep: 08:05

Julia Roberts: 00:16

Elvis Presley: 04:35

George W. Bush: 07:26

Tom Hanks: 11:17

I found quite a few more with A ratings and non-rounded birth times, but excluded those.

I think it is doable.

Larxene, again-- it is common in scientific studies for a sample to be biased in some fashion. The issue is whether the nature of the bias is such that it is liable to bias the outcome. I'd be hard pressed to explain why someone becoming an actor or elected official would some how make their birth times impossible to rectify accurately.

The only thing I can think of is that the sorts of life events the Atlantean would want to clock might be more frequent and impressive than those of the average person. But the proof of the software would be in its ability to deliver accurate results. If it could do this, I would assume that Meryl Streep winning a bunch of Oscars didn't affect the rectification procedure.

Paul wrote:Whatever claims Atlantean makes nor what his own personal success stories are, they are not a study of the efficacy of his rectification technique that would convince others.

Exactly so

Geoffrey, why don't you examine Atlantean's methods, get Polaris and you could then enact the study yourself. You could follow Waybread's example, only in this instance you would be the researcher?.

Because if somebody has been down this rather obvious road of research already, then I am wasting my time - and my original question was to ask if somebody has done this already....?

@Waybread:

I did say that the biases would not affect what we wanted to examine. I only added a caveat in that the method I suggested (i.e. eliminating X:Y0 and X:Y5) does not eliminate the biases, just eliminating the rounding errors. It's something to keep in mind for reference, since not all of our readers here are necessarily familiar with this scientific/statistical method.

Geoffrey wrote: Because if somebody has been down this rather obvious road of research already, then I am wasting my time - and my original question was to ask if somebody has done this already....?

Of course! But I don't think there are any studies such as those in existence. I just wouldn't want to go down a road, as per Waybread's example, where Atlantean becomes the researcher as it could quickly slip down a road, not purposely, of making demands to the effect that basically he has to prove his methods, which of course he doesn't. I guess the onus is on us, as interested parties, to do the research ourselves.

However that doesn't look possible as Atlantean is saying that Polaris is not available right now!

Atlantean wrote: The AA-rated database (birthtimes we supposedly can trust), is tremendously x:00, x:15, x:30, and x:45 heavy! ie. Even though AA-rated, pure mathematical probability informs us that they CAN NOT be correct. Real birthtimes do not congregate around even 15 minute intervals of time.

Right, I don't think that is too much of a problem. Frankly if an astrologer can narrow down a time frame within 10 minutes that would be statistically significant enough. It could be focused on being narrowed down to within X minutes of the stated birth, we cannot help that people 'eyeball' the clock on the wall and take the nearest five minutes, and realistically if I took five people's watches/clocks they are likely to be all out by a few minutes anyway, so we have to accept there's a degree of human error and in accuracy with time recording anyway. Still if out of, say, a 6 hour window, a method can get a time to within 10 minutes of the stated birth time, that is incredible in itself, especially as the only data that is used to analyse the time is purely astrological! If that was statistically significant enough it would be too compelling to easily dismiss!

I think you mean to say, "...of his rectification technique that would convince all others." Many HAVE been convinced of it. (and I have done quite a few rectifications for other astrologers) I have long given up on there being any (universal) consensus among astrologers. I once was arguing with an astrologer about Primary Directions relative to events. For the event, "Death of Father", there was a Saturn-MC aspect and they (for the life of them) could not see how that aspect could relate to that event. Sometimes, it is a lost cause.

Ack, sorry I wasn't meaning to imply otherwise. However the reality is that no matter how accurate your technique there are always going to be people who don't want to believe it. More subjects, they'll say. 100 isn't enough. Do 1000. 1000 isn't enough, do 10,000 etc.

waybread wrote: With Method #1 (recommended in my first post one p. 1, above,) only people with known birth times would be admitted to the sample. If their birth time in muinutes were a multiple of 5, only those with birth times at 05, 25, 35, and 55 minutes after the hour would be accepted. Otherwise we could introduce a bigger rounding error of the hospital were rounding to 10- or 15-minute intervals. Obviously if someone has a birth time in minutes that is not a multiple of 5, (like 3:21) we would assume that it was not rounded, and could include them.

We wouldn't need to do this though, remember the goal would be to show something statistically significant. We could take their recorded birth time, whatever that is, and then show that someone can get a time to within X minutes - hell even a half hour would be statistically significant, 15 mins even more so. We wouldn't need to dismiss certain times, just take them as they are and show that you can get within a certain time frame of that.

We are thinking about it from the point of view of astrologers needing an exact time, but really if someone can use a method to reliably and consistently get it within 15 minutes that would be amazing. In fact it would be mindblowing in terms of proving astrology's efficacy.

In statistics (in whch I am not expert, but took a course in it once eons ago) you also don't expect that 100% of your sample will show the predicted result. The reasons could be data errors, or possibly some individuals are special unique cases for some reason. If you interview 25 people and 24 of them produce stellar (pun intended) results, then you are onto something.

Right you'd need a particular p value. I don't know what would be a suitable correlate for a p value in a study such as this one you hypothetically propose, I'm not an expert in statistics either. Of course many studies of astrology leverage the fact that astrologers are not expert in statistics and so use inappropriate p-values to weaken the claims of astrologers. Think of the Carlson study which used a p value normally used for laws of physics rather than psychology, a more appropriate correlate.

I appreciate (relative to Polaris/rectification) everyone taking their time to consider and carefully think out the ramifications of any potential tests and of the methodology.

A few points based on the previous posts and in general relative to the problem at hand, in no particular order:

A statistical study of the kind that would be suggested by a statistician is not even possible in this case, as each particular rectification is time/effort intensive. Since many (most, if not nearly all) here do not really have a clear view of what Polaris DOES or how it functions, it would likely be intensely informing to do a (public) sample rectification to demonstrate the methods and so that all can more clearly see any potential problems in ANY future testing that is decided upon...

The average error between rectified time and recorded time has not been statistically tabulated. I would have to ask Isaac if he has formally or informally tried to find an "average error" which might be helpful in our correct formulating of the conditions for some future analysis.

A normal 24-hour search can require as many as 30 dated events or more to be conclusive. It would be much more efficacious to be given, say a 6 hour window in which the birthtime is known to be contained and then for Polaris to deduce that time to say, within +/- 10 mins.

Using this model, a single successful finding of the birthtime (within the 10 mins) would relate to odds of 1 in 18, or just over 5%.

As we repeat this process, consecutively, the odds (against) increase rapidly due to the formulation of probabilities in mutually exclusive events.

Specifically,
By the time we get to just 5 successful demonstrations, we have defeated odds on the same order of magnitude as if we have rolled a (6-sided) die and correctly called the result EIGHT times in a row. ie. quite some accomplishment!

Re: Polaris as Black Box

Although the results from Polaris must be checked with Secondaries and PSSR aspects to determine which is the correct time from Polaris; Polaris itself is pretty much a black box. The astrologer has no method to weight any particular events higher than others, nor to influence the outcome in any way. Polaris "simply" looks at all the events, gives a weighted score based on how strong the astrology is relative to the complete event list for each moment in the search range and then spits out which times performed best. [The more events that are available, the more the tendency of the correct time to rise higher up the list of suggested times.]

I think it might be very constructive to do one demo-rectification based on the data of someone on this forum. (this also would allow others who have contrasting methods to try their hand at it with their normal "go to" methods and see how well they hold up).

Take care,

James

Atlantean wrote:
A statistical study of the kind that would be suggested by a statistician is not even possible in this case, as each particular rectification is time/effort intensive.

So what?

The test would be to show if astrologers can get a birth time within a specific time band (+/- 15 minutes) using whatever astrological method they like.

Given (say) twenty case histories along with a date and place of birth, how well can the astrologers do? That is fairly basic statistics.

I think that if rectification works as astrologers seem to take it for granted that it does, then a panel of say five astrologers of recognised competence should be able to agree on the methodology for each case history and come up with an agreed rectified time of birth.

Let us face it, rectification is a pretty routine astrological procedure. Most astrologers do it. Rectification is not some arcane, esoteric procedure written out in Latin on dusty parchment. The test as described above ought to work.

Geoffrey wrote: I think that if rectification works as astrologers seem to take it for granted that it does, then a panel of say five astrologers of recognized competence should be able to agree on the methodology for each case history and come up with an agreed rectified time of birth.

i don't take the idea that rectification works in any for granted way. i don't know that you are going to get 5 astrologers to agree on the methodology to use for rectification either. the divergence in house systems is only one example where it is hard to get consensus within the astro community on basic methodology.

Geoffrey wrote: Let us face it, rectification is a pretty routine astrological procedure. Most astrologers do it. Rectification is not some arcane, esoteric procedure written out in Latin on dusty parchment. The test as described above ought to work.

i don't think it is a routine procedure. some may make like it is routine. using a software program would seem to make it more routine only becuase the software has a built in methodology you either agree with or don't.. bottom line is it would be great to have some study done to help substantiate an approach or software program that claims to be able to do rectification successfully. until that happens it is one persons word over another with no verification.. james a's example with the women who found the birth data was a good one, but not enough to convince anyone skeptical like myself. a real study ought to be done and there hasn't been one so far as i know. rectification has always been viewed as one of the most difficult areas for an astrologer to engage in for good reason.. a person can go wrong very easily. i think it is an ideal area for the use of a computer program, but i am not convinced with the work shared by others using polaris. maybe if i owned the program i would view it differently. as i recall a few years ago it was selling for about 400 US.

Hi again,

you guys are in such a "battle" that I think you missed my post. This was the original question for this thread:

Geoffrey wrote:There must be a reasonable body of evidence for charts where the birth time was not known and for which the birth time was rectified - and then the true birth time came to light.

Someone must have done a study of this....?

And as I've replied in page 2 of this thread, we've made in 2010 a study of the syzygy method (which is a rectification method declared in Christian Astrology and Tetrabiblos) and this was the conclusion:

Careful analysis showed us that the syzygy method was crafted in such way that was biased to give a majority of very good results, independently of the data veracity.

So, as far as some rectification methods are concerned, there is strong evidence that they do not work.. The post is in page 2, the study can be read in http://www.skyplux.com/init/static/animodar_effect.pdf

Paul wrote:

However the reality is that no matter how accurate your technique there are always going to be people who don't want to believe it. More subjects, they'll say. 100 isn't enough. Do 1000. 1000 isn't enough, do 10,000 etc.

Very true. Sceptics can't get convinced. You have to wait until they die out someone once said.