Skeptical Inquiries

A Grand Astrological Experiment

 

Over a period of four years from 2000 to 2004 I played thousands of games of solitaire to see if there was any pattern to the timing of wins. What was found is that there is indeed a very strong link between the astrological factors and the timing of winning card games. Well if the fact that the rate of earthquakes is dependant on the the sign of the moon and the ascendant and the house position of the moon did not blow apart all conventional logic for you this study certainly will. Encouraged by the results for the earthquakes I examined an old long term experiment I did from 2000 to 2004. During this period I played solitaire and kept a chart for every win that I had over this four year period. I had 257 wins. I analysed by chi-squared all the charts for the position of all the planets in the signs and houses. For the signs only the planets out to Mars were used as these changed position enough during this time span to randomly distribute their positions in the signs. I also took the ascendant and the sign of the midheaven. For the houses the Sun, Mercury and Venus were not used as these positions would be skewed as it was less likely for me to play solitaire at certain times of day than other times of day. For the other planets this is irrelevant. What I found was that all the positions of the planets were significant except for the position of the sun, which was fairly random. For the  houses all the planets, except for the moon were found to play a significant role even tiny Pluto was found to be extremely significant in house position. The sums of the signs and houses were also extremely significant overall as were the various houses. Now the results are highly dependant on the one doing the experiment and the results may vary if another person does the experiment as the planetary positions could be affecting me personally. To win at solitaire is very difficult and a great deal of luck is involved. What this experiment shows is that "luck" is not random, but is greatly affected by the positions of the planets and their effect on the outcome of an event. The other factor in winning at solitaire is concentration. If you miss a trick by not concentrating then you will lose. So, the influence may also be upon personal ability to concentrate on a task. I have attached charts of the sums of the signs. The luckiest sign for me was Taurus and the most unlucky was Virgo. The luckiest house was the 5th, which is associated with games of chance, and the most unlucky was the 10th. I guess I should have been working. I can't imagine how many games I played to win 256 times.... More analysis will be forthcoming. 

All very significant results had a Chi-squared P=0.0001, except for Pluto which had 0.0029 

 

The button is for the link to the statistical analysis.