Lies, “Darn” Lies and Statistics
January 16, 2007
When we look at comparing how each sun sign stacks up to each other in things like how they pay their bills or how well they drive there is a fundamental flaw in the statistics. We don’t know how many people are born under each sign.
How important is this? There is an ebb and flow in the rate of births during the year. In a well documented study of French births found:
that seasonal and retrograde phenomena created unexpected non-uniformities in sign distributions that must be taken into account in any research study. Otherwise, if you found this “anomaly” in your own study you might conclude that these variations were significant instead of realizing they were just normal.
In other words more people are born under some birth signs than others. After conducting a study on the subject, this astrologer came up with different frequencies in United States births than French births, so it is entirely possible that birth frequencies vary not only from month to month, but also country to country.
Until someone pulls out a super computer and definitively nails downs these numbers, any study that says a “Scorpio is more likely to . . .” without comparing the results to the frequencies of births is missing an important part of the equation.
In order of frequency of birth in sun signs in the United States (and keep in mind these numbers are very raw, based on National Health Center statistics for 1995 to 2002):
Virgo–11,395 per day
Leo–11, 312 per day
Cancer–11,157 per day
Libra–11, 031 per day
Gemini–10,899 per day
Taurus–10,719 per day
Pisces–10,666 per day
Aquarius–10,661 per day
Sagittarius–10,592 per day
Scorpio-10,561 per day
Capricorn–10,482 per day
Aries–10,259 per day
So the next time you see one of those studies comparing how many of one sign does a thing compared to the others, remember the three kinds of lies: lies, “darn” lies and statistics.
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