The Pisces Effect

ARIES

For me, Aries was a good month to start with. For a start, it is the first month in the zodiac calendar. I also knew from the previous charts that it had a much higher number of medals than expected, and this bode well from what I had been reading. I had just googled “Aries” on Wikipedia and found the following from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aries_%28astrology%29

Aries is ruled by the planet Mars.
Aries personality attributes are: Self-confidence; Courage; Impatience; Enthusiasm; Initiative; Forceful; Irritable.
Aries are believed to have a strong, athletic, well-proportioned body.

With these attributes, it is likely that they would be high on the medals list.

The first thing I tested was the Mars link. Mars is the Roman god of war and the most prominent of the military gods that were worshipped by the Roman legions. It seemed reasonable to test the Olympic sports that I thought had a strong military link with the number of medals won by Aries athletes.

I took Shooting as a start and, if I didn’t score a bull’s eye, then I at least got a triple 20 because I got a 1 in 60 level of significance. This went up to nearly 1 in 250 when I filtered out the Women only competitions.

This featured in almost all Aries sports. Aries females rarely, if ever, score significantly higher than chance. That’s not to say that there is no “Aries effect” for females, since there have been fewer women’s than men’s Olympic competitions to allow significances to appear. But it is true that any Aries effect is far less marked compared with Aries male athletes. For this reason only the probabilities for male Aries athletes will be given.

The next sport I looked at was Wrestling. Here again male Aries were well above chance at nearly 1 in 50, so this was looking promising indeed, even if it wasn’t quite as spectacular as the Pisces effect.

To complete the military picture, I also investigated Judo, Archery and Biathlon, or Military Patrol as it once was known. None of these sports scored significantly but I did notice that their percentages were similar to those of shooting and wrestling and so they are included in the following chart.

All Men’s Shooting, Wrestling, Judo, Archery & Biathlon Competitions.

Aries now has almost a 1 in 20,000 probability of being due to chance. Not quite up to the 1 in 100,000 probability seen with Pisces when Swimming and Water Polo were combined, but I’m not nearly finished with Aries yet.

Let’s go back to the Aries personality traits listed in Wikipedia.

“Self-confidence; Courage; Impatience; Enthusiasm; Initiative; Forceful; Irritable.”

To me, these traits seem ideally suited to one Olympic sport in particular, namely Ice Hockey.

Was I right that these Aries players could ram the puck home more than any other sign?

Here is the chart that shows they do.

All Men’s Ice Hockey Competitions

Aries’ probability against chance here is 1 in 5,000.

I was later to find that this probability could be increased to a huge 1,000,000 to 1 just by taking the athletes born on or after 21 March 1960.

To recap: so far a probability of 1 in 20,000 with men’s military sports and a probability of 1 in 5,000 with men’s Ice Hockey has been found. Could I find any combination of men’s sports that would give an even higher probability?

Wikipedia states that Aries are believed to have a strong, athletic, well-proportioned body and other sites refer to Aries as being tall (or at least above average in height) with broad shoulders, a strong, well-proportioned body.

Coupling this with the knowledge that Aries athletes have won significantly more medals than expected in wrestling, and have also performed better than average at Judo, indicated that they should also do better than expected in sports that demand muscular arm power and a strong chest.

Here is the list of sports in addition to Wrestling and Judo that I thought fitted the criteria:

Nordic Skiing
Shot Put
Gymnastic Ring Exercises & Rope Climbing
Handball
Hockey
Lacrosse (it was an Olympic sport in 1904 & 1908)
Rowing
Sailing
Triathlon

And this is what the chart looks like just for these additional sports.

All Men’s Nordic Skiing, Shot Put, Rings, Rope Climbing, Handball, Hockey, Lacrosse, Rowing, Sailing & Triathlon Competitions

This time the probability was about 1 in 30,000. That looked impressive. But what would the probability be when it was combined with the medals won in Ice Hockey and the “military” sports?

What do you think the probability came out at?

A million to one?

Ten million to one?

A hundred million to one?

Actually, the probability calculator I used does not measure probabilities of more than a billion to one and it’s well beyond that. But at that level of probability, it’s academic what the exact figure is.

Here is the chart.

All Men’s Nordic Skiing, Shot Put, Rings, Rope Climbing, Handball, Hockey, Lacrosse, Rowing, Sailing, Triathlon, Ice Hockey, Shooting, Wrestling, Judo, Archery and Biathlon Competitions

The chart also shows the very marked seasonal effect. From the 8 months from Taurus to Sagittarius, no sign is above expected. Cancer fails but only by a whisker (if you can have crabs with whiskers… maybe it should have been Leo!) J

Well, I’ll come back to Aries later in the book when looking at Olympic events and participating countries but for the time being Aries had really knocked me over with its arm power.

Curiosity Corner

I know it’s just a coincidence but…

Did you realise that Rams (the English word for Aries) is an anagram for Mars, its ruling planet, and also Arms, which is particularly appropriate considering its mastery of shooting and its mastery of so many arm power sports?