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Great post on methods, annadeer.

The first step in any research project is to narrow the scope of the study to a manageable level. If additional variables seem important, then a long and happy research project awaits further down the road. Let's start with Nobel Prize winners.

Setting up the parameters of such a study would be troublesome, for the reasons you mention. Not the least of which would be if we restrict the study to fast-moving points like chart angles, a lot of Nobel Prize winners' birth times are unknown, and at this point, unknowable. So one might decide to limit the sample of prize winners to those with Rodden AA or A ratings.

Presumably nobody is born destined to win a Nobel Prize. I think one would have to look at dates when winners got the phone call from Sweden, and when the prize was awarded, vs. straight-up birth charts.

Maybe the short way around the messiness would be to ask the question, where does asteroid Nobel appear in charts of Nobel prize winners on these two dates? My hunch is that transits would be the place to start. (I've not worked with primary directions, but some people who do think they're a lot more accurate. They require an exact birth time.) Transit charts would be an easy place to start because you get both the birth chart and the planets' positions on key dates.

Statistics generally are used on samples.

There are hundreds of these Nobel laureates by now, most of them long deceased. Select a small "convenience" sample of Rodden AA birth charts for starters, as a pilot project. Maybe restrict the sample of laureates to the hard sciences for now. Stick with asteroid Nobel plus planets and angles. And then just see what happens.

Other variables might be relevant, but consistency across the sample charts is important. Not everyone has a personal name asteroid. One could always look at other types of prognosticative charts later.

Hopefully a nice computer program could do a lot of the grunt work. There are astrologers who develop astrological software who might be prevailed upon to help out.

Initially you are working with qualitative data: does asteroid Nobel hit a natal planet or angle on either key date? Yes or no? Think of it like a table, with your key dates across the top (birth date, date of phone call, date of award) and the list of planets and angles on the vertical axis. When you get a hit with asteroid Nobel, you put a tic mark in the box.

Meanwhile you keep a file on your Nobel laureate subjects so you can easily go back and tweak the study if you wish to.

There are simple statistical methods that I wish I remember that basically tell you whether your number of "hits" is greater than what you would expect through random chance. You aren't required to have a hit every time. Just more hits than would be reasonably expected if there were no relationship.
Getting 3 out of 4 correct (75%) would be highly significant.

The statistical test will also be set up with a confidence interval, that basically says, what are the odds of your conclusions being correct/incorrect? Your confidence interval should indicate that your chance of being mistaken are negligible.

I dunno-- if I wanted to do this type of work, I might contact my nearest university, phone up the math or sociology department, and ask to speak to the graduate supervisor about whether s/he can recommend a grad student who might be willing to work on such a project for an hourly wage of $something. (Sociologists work with a lot of statistics.) Meanwhile, you could have all of your data assembled, ready to rock & roll.

I get that you might have never the time or the inclination for all of this!

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annadeer, one other thing is that in any kind of sort-of quantitative analysis of asteroids, you'd have to be careful of all of the near-homonyms, such as "Dinah" for "dinar" as a unit of currency. [I looked up asteroid Dinah, BTW, and it was named for Alice's cat in Alice in Wonderland. Go figure.] How close is close enough?

Do semi-homonyms work only in English, or in other languages?

The word "actor" [asteroid 12238] is Schauspieler/in in German, actriz in Spanish when feminine, and herec in Slovak. If astrologers in these countries who didn't speak English were to look for asteroids for Marilyn Monroe, they probably wouldn't catch it. A lot of asteroids are Japanese words and names. Many languages use different forms of words dependent upon gender and relative status in a conversation.

I don't mean to split hairs but there is a big linguistic question here.

I have found with namesake asteroids in synastry, cognate names in other languages can result in hits when the English name does not.

I don't know how far astrologers can or should take this, though.

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Waybread,

1. As for asteroids in various languages -- on the one hand, I think most people in the world, including astrologers, have enough knowledge of English to find and use relevant asteroids with English names. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the astrological forces at work do not favor the English language and culture over other ones! 8) If we were to look up asteroids with Japanese, Hindi, Chinese or Persian words/ names, they would for sure make as much sense as the ENglish ones.

2. As for names that only come close: Dinah or Dinar, Ourinhos or Ouranos — astrologically, it’s the same. It may seem far-fetched if you’re not used to it, but experience shows that if there is no asteroid with the exact name, the one that comes closest works as well. And the origin of the name does not matter at all.
Eg like Alex mentioned, there’s no asteroid called Putin, but Putilini was conjunct Mars a few days ago. Vacchi conjunct Eris, when the anti-vaccine mandate protests happen all over the globe. Korhonen conjunct Wuhan conjunct Labs conjunct Apollo when the koronavirus outbreak started. I have Anandarao conjunct my Asc (the correct spelling of my name being Anna De Roo). I could go on and on. Too many examples to have any doubt about this working.
But if/when I were/am to work together with a mathematician, I would be perfectly happy to only work with asteroids that have the exact name!

3. For the Nobel prize statistics experiment, again, I think it’s too complex. Limiting the research to transits over planets and angles would not give proportionally correct results. See my earlier posted examples:
Einstein got his Nobel prize when Nobel transited over his natal Einstein
Pauli: when Nobel was conjunct his Lunar Return MC and SR Asc
Bohr: when Nobel transited over his natal POF
Heisenberg: transiting Nobel was conjunct his natal Heisenberg
Schrödinger: SR Nobel was conjunct SR Jupiter and SR POF + transiting Nobel conjunct natal Schrödinger
Dirac: natal Nobel conjunct natal Sun and SR Nobel conj SR JUp SR Lord of 10
Hemingway: natal Nobel conjunct natal Asc, SR Nobel conj Mercury Lord of 10
De Broglie: transiting Nobel and Venus were conjunct his natal Nobel
Marquez: transiting Nobel was conjunct natal Pallas Athena

Too many different things to look for, and at too many different places

4. Thank you for the tip to hire a grad student! Just waiting for Ouranos to transfer the Dinahs!

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I've been working extensively with asteroids for over 15 years, and I do try to keep as close as possible to the exact match, for validation purposes. However, experience has shown me that close phonetic matches and spelling variations will absolutely work.

For example, I'm currently working on a piece about Stephen Breyer's retirement from the SCOTUS. There is no Breyer asteroid, but I plugged in Brewer, Brouwer and Breuer, the closest available. All three are at station this month (as well as asteroid Stevens). Stations signal literal "turning points" in a biography, and these coincide with Breyer's deliberation process reportedly beginning early in January. Brewer and Brouer are also at station in his birth chart, with Breuer squared the Sun, which to me indicates that yes, these are appropriate points to use for this individual, as they appear prominently in the nativity, as well as by transit. (At his Senate confirmation as Justice in 1994, Sun conjunct asteroid Senator opposed Brouwer, Breuer conjoined Themis, named for the Greek goddess of justice, and Brewer was trine Justitia, her Roman counterpart.) [Note: Breyer also has Justitia at station natally, as did Scalia.]

On the issue of foreign words (well, foreign to English, that is), they come in two varieties - they do work as literal translations into English (as asteroid Schwartz, German for "black"), but they also work when the foreign word looks like an English one. For example, asteroid Lie is properly pronounced "lee", named for Swedish mathematician Sophus Lie, but it works perfectly for deliberate deception, as innumerable cases have shown in the past 15 years. (For example, Bill Clinton has it conjunct Aphrodite - affairs - exactly trine Venus, and sesqui Juno - spouses.) Asteroid Bilk is a place name, for an observatory in Dusseldorf, Germany, but it works for financial fraud, prominent in the charts of the likes of Bernie Madoff, Carlo Ponzi, and Frank Abagnale.

I think partly this can be accounted for by sound. The "music of the spheres", if you will. Words with similar sounds resonate together somehow. Hit the named point by transit and the others will ping, too.

I've also had the experience of using a "place holder", and then subsequently the exact name will be applied to a newly-named asteroid, and both work. "Marsha" worked for my father Marshall very well, then they named an asteroid Marshall, and that also shows prominently in the same charts where Marsha did.

But I agree that these are a harder "sell" to the populace at large, and certainly would be for scientific types. So as I say, I prefer to focus on exact matches with the closest orbs possible.

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Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that examines sounds in a language. Phonetics describes these sounds using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
Like red, head, said, what we hear is ED

The IPA can be helpful for studying a language, especially languages that use letters that are silent or have multiple pronunciations. Languages like Arabic and Spanish are consistant in their spelling and pronunciation – each letter represents a single sound which rarely varies. English and French are different. They have many letters with two or more sounds and many letters that are silent.

And also using the word and the association the person makes
A rosebud is a young rose whose petals have not yet opened out fully. For Orson Welles, it was the opening act of a lifetime search for a lost love.
Blessings!

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Interesting remarks Ouranos and Alex about the importance of the sound/phonetics of the asteroids -- never thought about this before, but if in the end everything in the universe is about vibration, which both scientists and spiritual teachers seem to agree on, that makes somehow sense

Wasn't aware of the existence of asteroid Lie -- thank you Alex. COuldn't help it but had to check: MArilyn Monroe had Lie conjunct Neptune in her 8th house in the Solar return of her death. And Fauci has natal Lie conjunct Wuhan, square LAbs. The stellium Korhonen-Wuhan- Labs-Apollo in the chart for the covid-outbreak, made a perfect trine to Lie. And the chart for the first covid vaccine, had Lie in a perfect conjunction with the Moon, conjunct MC, opposite Neptune and Labs.
:-? :shock:

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annadeer, my proposed study design for Nobel laureates was suggestive only!

But the main consideration in developing a feasible objective study is keeping the allowable conditions the same for everyone included in the study sample. It would create a bias if a researcher allowed exact or cognate namesake asteroids for prize winners who had them, but some prize winners simply didn't have any.

If your subjective results to date further indicate that natal phonetically similar namesake asteroids work in transits for Nobel laureates, that's fine; and probably a good reason to include them in a statistical study. but I don't think they could be used in an objective test unless you similarly limited your sample of Nobel Laureates to those who had an asteroid phonetically close to it. Just because it would create a bias in terms of "hits." Then also, it would probably be a good idea to limit the number of allowable asteroids per Nobel laureate so that they are the same for everyone.

I think first name asteroids would be allowable, as well as surnames.

A big issue is allowable orbs, notably in asteroid-to-asteroid contacts. I'd suggest keeping it within a degree.

I earlier mentioned physics Nobel prize winner Donna Strickland (b. May 27, 1959, Guelph, Ontario, Canada). There is an asteroid Strickland (33633 named for someone else) as well as an asteroid Strickler 33634 and asteroid Donna (3085.)

Without a birth time there are no angles or Arabic parts, and the moon* could move 6 degrees in either direction from its noon default position of 15 Aquarius.

I looked at her chart again for the date Strickland was awarded the Nobel prize in physics, Dec. 10 2018 in Stockholm. I didn't relocate the chart and probably should have. Astrodienst, which I used, gives a noon default on transits. Nevertheless I found:

asteroid Nobel conjunct natal Uranus (modern ruler of science)<2 degrees

transiting Uranus conjunct natal asteroid Strickland < 1 degree

transiting moon* conjunct natal asteroid Donna <1 degree

transiting Pluto conjunct natal asteroid Donna <2 degrees

transiting asteroid Strickland conjunct natal moon*

transiting NN conjunct her natal Mars <1 degree

transiting Venus conjunct natal Neptune <1 degree.

transiting Mercury conjunct natal Jupiter <1 degree

There was clearly a lot going on for Strickland even without asteroids, including coming off a second Saturn return. But they seem to draw a much finer, sharper point on an event that would have produced strong transits without them. Also with such strong close asteroid-planet conjunctions, I don't think it's necessary to get into less compelling aspects.

With a statistical study, though, it's best to keep it simple in the first instance. It is always possible to expand the inclusions in Asteroids 2: The Sequel.



There is one as-yet unanswered question as to why asteroids should work. There is another question of what exactly they indicate. It occurs to me that asteroids may be the fine-tuning of the zodiac calendar.