Athlete's star sign could lead to Olympic gold
Yikes, whether it's true or not, it sure does sound like a statement a woo would make.
And; just because it's statistically correct doesn't mean that the factors are all there.
Shut them up or empty the room?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

"Did you know that almost any distribution of 12 data points against the tropical astrological zodiac signs can be almost exactly mapped by a polynomial function of the third degree?"

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

This part is funny. Makes me think of numerology.

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"To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people merely exist." - Oscar Wilde

I wonder what the star signs of the British Cycling team are, they cleaned up, 7 out of 10 golds!

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I have a PhD from Glasgow University on statistical ecology and a further 33 years working on statistical data analysis...

Ah, yes.

"There are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Benjamin Disraeli

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

And of course, it's very possible the guy (who lost is job and is probably looking for money) knows an awful lot about statistics but is just plain lying!

I like the Douglas Adams take in one of his stories--the horoscope said Gordon Way must do something like "think critically about the problem at hand" (I forgot exactly) but strangely failed to mention he would be dead within the hour.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Why stop at third degree? You can remove the "almost" from the above quote by using a polynomial of the 12th degree.

Also, I wonder how accurate the birthdate data is, especially considering that Phelps is not a pisces (Please don't anyone call me a woo-woo for looking this up). Most everyone assumes that the data is correct, but nobody (including me) bothers to validate it.

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Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

The BA Blog takes a turn on the topic: Pseudolympics, specifically to call out that ludicrous 3rd-degree-polynomial claim but also to recommend other skeptical lambasting of the astrological mumbo jumbo.

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

From the OP's link
Yeah, bull.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
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Exactly. What feeble-brained astrologer came up with that? I'm a Taurus and I can tell you that we Taureans are way too practical to ever balance ourselves at the top of a long, skinny pole, especially with a 14'+ drop to come, I don't care how much padding they use.

(Excuse me while I get my tongue out of my cheek.)

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Yeah, I don't believe in astrology either. My tarot card reader showed me that it was all nonsense.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I'm also a Taurus and will bring more credibility to this claim by stating that I, too, am way to practical to ever balance myself at the top of a long, skinny pole. Now, if it's a long'ish, not-to-thick pole, and the drop is no more than 13'11"...that's another story...but we just couldn't qualify for the olympics under such conditions.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

So phelps is an aquaris, or a pisces.

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If it's just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.
Contact Carl Sagan

http://davidsuniverse.wordpress.com/

I have often been deeply disappointed by the level of statistical understanding demonstrated by people working in the life sciences, including those who have impressive qualifications which they have used to give weight to their (very sadly wrong) opinion on such matters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Meadows In particular, Professor Sir Roy Meadows, who gave his opinion to the court that two cot deaths in the same family was so statistically improbable it must be murder. Given the level of numeracy of judges, it is not usually a successful defence to attempt to point out serious errors in the prosecution's "expert" statistical evidence, even when they are egregious, but finally someone succeeded. Several wrongly convicted parents have now been released.

It is also the case that quite a large number of university mathematics professors fail to understand the Monty Hall problem, another situation that involves some moderate sophistication in the understanding of probability.

As it happens, Phelps is Cancer, and Spitz is Aquarius.

That's my complaint about statistics. You need quite a bit of math background to tell the difference between a proper and inproper use of statistics.

Regarding the Monty Hall problem, I once had a professor show a "proof" using Baysian statistics. His conclusion was correct, but his proof was flawed. I pointed out the subtle flaw in the proof, and also that his "proof" actually indicated that one should never switch doors ( which we know is incorrect). I pointed out that a subtle flaw in a proof can result in a completely different conclusion, so how can one be certain that a statistical proof is free of a subtle flaw. That is one of the reasons that I am always skeptical about statistical proofs.

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Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

Is that true? The closest I can find is this from NY Times:

"The experts responded in force to Ms. vos Savant's column. Of the critical letters she received, close to 1,000 carried signatures with Ph.D.'s, and many were on letterheads of mathematics and science departments."

which does imply some math professors either made a mistake, or found Vos Savant's mistake in stating the problem (mentioned in the same article http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...54C0A967958260
). I'm not so sure that "quite a large number" of math profs, especially now after Vos Savant made the problem famous, don't know the standard analysis.

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info