View Single Post
  #15 (permalink)  
Old 02-July-2007, 10:00 PM
aurora's Avatar
aurora aurora is offline
Established Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 3,064
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Tulip View Post
My most recent research project is looking at rain records for Sydney since 1980 to find correlations with planetary cycles. Most interestingly, over this 27 year period, the total rain on the dates ten days before each monthly Moon-Uranus conjunction is three standard deviations above average, and almost three standard deviations below average four days before each Moon-Uranus conjunction. This is a highly significant result...
No, it isn't.

If the distribution is normal, about 99.5% of the observations would fall within +/- 3 SD of the mean.

You've got daily data for 24 years? About 8700 days? And the best evidence you have is just slightly over 3 standard deviations?

Get thee to an introductory statistics course.
__________________
"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender