16
@Atlantean:

I understand what you are saying, but are the birth times really skewed to those values? How did you find out about this? I can't really see this from my own experience, but experience is of course, non-representative.

Can someone get some summary statistics on the AA Astro-Databank charts? I might be able to do it if I know of a way to download all the data...



That's why we need to check the data before we collect them and do the analysis. If what you said is true, then the data will have a lot of random errors.

In this case, method 1 may be better, but the problem is again, the sample may not be random and representative. Whether you are using a simple, clustered, stratified or convenience sample, you will have to face the communicative, geographic or ideological limitations of the different types of sample.

This means the study will have to be repeated over and over to overcome these limitations...sigh. lol :lala



On a personal note, I can't believe there are still places where your birth time is not recorded on the birth certificate. I happen to be one of the victims :(
Interested in Hellenistic astrology? Visit my blog.

The appearance changes, but the essence remains.

17
Hello larxene,

Re: "I understand what you are saying, but are the birth times really skewed to those values? How did you find out about this?"

I thought it was common knowledge.

To see it for yourself, just go pull up a bunch of individual records and write down the given birthtimes' minutes. You will have more x:00, x:15, x:30, and x:45 (proportionally) represented than any other times, even though odd-times should dominate approx. fifteen to one...

James

18
Geoffrey wrote:the fact that Polaris has an efficient pattern recognition algorithm and has found matches between life events and planetary positions is not proof of rectification, or that prediction using that information has been successful.
true that! this salient fact seems to evade the attention of some for whatever reason..

19
Boys, boys.... :lol: Could we cut to the chase?

1. Rounded birth times. An interesting point has been raised, that a lot of hospital and birth certificate times appear to be rounded. Mine is spot-on a 10-minute interval, so perhaps I was born a minute or three earlier or later. But frankly, we could allow for some small margin of error and still conclude that the Polaris (or some other rectification) system has merit if it got within x number of minutes of exact. I'd propose a 5-minute acceptable margin of error, to account for hospital rounding in the data set.

2. Sample bias. Larxene raises an interesting point about the Astro-Data bank celebrity charts being a biased sample.... but frankly, anybody who wants his/her chart rectified to get a more detailed astrological reading is part of a biased sample of the larger population. We are not talking about a Gauquelin-type study of eminent people, merely whether Polaris (or some other rectification system) can accurately pinpoint birth times.

Also, a lot of "scientific" research includes biases of one sort or another. The relevant question is whether the bias is liable to throw off the results. Whether a newborn infant later becomes an adult known for singing and dancing, or throwing a football, seems irrelevant to testing a chart rectification method.

An advantage of celebrity charts is that so many of their life history details are public.

3. Locating accurate known birth times. I read natal charts for people on two other astrology forums, and I have rnoticed that people from India know their birth times down to the minute. Probably this reflects the greater respectability of astrology in India. It should be possible to get a sample of India natives, but might take more effort.

4. "Blind" research seems critical to eliminate potential bias by the astrologer conducting the actual rectification tests. Even an unbiased astrologer like the Atlantean would still be charged with bias if he knew the birth times before-hand.

A research partner could pre-screen and eliminate any celebrity charts that seem rounded more than a 5-minute interval; or a willing group of participants could be pre-screened to exclude any with suspect birth times.

20
Geoffrey wrote: Waybread, for what it is worth, I have my ascendant in the first degree of Leo. (I am lucky, my mother had the presence of mind to look at the clock as I let out my first cry!) But I have the feeling that I was more Cancer like in my younger days and it was as I grew older that Leo type qualities came to the fore. With your ascendant near a sign cusp, perhaps you have the same impression - that you have evolved from Virgo to Libra as you got older?

Thankfully nobody here has recommended determining (aka guessing) the rising sign based upon physical appearance, because you would expect progressions to exert some influences. If anybody thinks they can spot rising signs based on appearance I recommend the astrofaces site:
http://www.astrofaces.com/astrofaces/index.html

Also, different planetary positions can really throw off the stereotypes of the rising sign. A strong moon might make the native feel more like Cancer rising. I exhibit Virgo rising traits through my mental outlook, not through my appearance. I do modern astrology and with Uranus closely square my ascendant there is no way my physical appearance could fit the neat & tidy Virgo stereotype, especially when I was young. And I say this as someone who never glanced at astrology prior to turning 40.

The funny thing is that when I used Efrein's book to try to rectify my chart, I could see Libra rising pretty easily. By that time progressions could have taken effect, so they are something to watch out for with more subjective rectification methods.

This is what makes the Polaris software so exciting, if it could be conclusively demonstrated on a bigger sample.

The implications would be huge, because how could it work if the astrology-scoffers are correct? And mightn't it shed some light on the house systems that most effectively clock transits?

Polaris

21
Hi all,

I got Polaris a while ago. The program showed a time, very close to my real birthtime, under the first 10 scores.

On the contrary to find the time for two other family member was very difficult although I had many events to use. I am not a professional astrologer and don't use the program often. People who use it every day will certainly find it much easier to figure out the correct birthtimes on a regular basis.
Last edited by Southern Cross on Thu Apr 17, 2014 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

22
Hello Waybread,

Re: "Larxene raises an interesting point about the Astro-Data bank celebrity charts being a biased sample...."

I believe that was my point that the Astrodatabank is skewed towards even 15 minute intervals. If Larxene made the point earlier, I apologize.

Re: "The relevant question is whether the bias is liable to throw off the results."

How would you propose it be done where it wouldn't throw it off? If the birthtime was actually 10:18 am, but the AA-database has it from the birth certificate as 10:30 am (happens much more often than one might think), it will be rated AA; HOWEVER, the MC is off by a whopping 3?. Most would look at the faulty-recorded 10:30 am and see Polaris' results as 10:17:44 am and think it was WRONG by over twelve minutes, when in fact it might very well be 100% correct. I don't see an easy way around this problem and it casts serious doubts about using the AA database, since a sizable error in a specific case implies a likely error in the general case!

THE way to see if it is (actually) correct is by the coordination of several reliable systems that together have such a high odds against them agreeing across all events that it dispels coincidence. (for those that studied probability and statistics)

Take care

James

23
Hello Southern Cross,

Thank you for sharing your experiences with Polaris!

Beyond having chart-casting software, I can't think of any software more important than Polaris, since ALL we do with astrology depends on the accuracy of that initial birth info. (which is OFTEN in error, whether from Mother's memory OR from Lois Rodden's AA-rated database)

Re: Some rectifications being more difficult

Strangely enough, I have had this circumstance several times and asked for one or two more events from the client. Often these extra couple of events have made ALL the difference in seeing the result clearly and/or in Polaris rating the birthtime much more highly than surrounding birthtimes...

Peace

James

24
Hi there,

interesting topic here!

I am just replying to say that a few years ago (I think 2010), I've worked with Luis Ribeiro and Helena Avelar on a project to try to find statistical evidence on a rectification method described in William Lilly's Christian Astrology, namely the Syzygy method.

Basically, we tested two real data-sets, one from people submitting their data to our webapp, and other with 100+ births of a maternity hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. The data were very accurate, and seemed to support the validity of the syzygy method. However, when we tested against a random control data-set with fictitious birth data, we also had strong support for the syzygy rectification method. 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 we had to conclude that nothing could be concluded about the veracity of the method, although the statistical real data seemed to agree. Again, only when we compared with random data we could detect the problem..

I've published the article with our findings in The Tradition journal, you can find the article here if you're interested in the subject: http://www.skyplux.com/init/static/animodar_effect.pdf


Jo?o Ventura
http://www.skyplux.com/

25
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.
Interested in Hellenistic astrology? Visit my blog.

The appearance changes, but the essence remains.

26
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.

27
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! :lol: )

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.