I’m planning on using Tarot cards, I hope that is ok.
Let me give you the results NOW. But few clarifications first.
- The many of the photos given are not very clear. This may affect the findings.
- The dowsing rod reacts in similar way for others too, if they can hold the rods properly.
- There has been experience for me in respect of the photo of a living person, a celebrity, which displays reaction similar to the photos of dead persons. So you can expect one error among the list of dead.
Now the results:-
Living: f01, 02, 04, 05,06,07,09,10,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,21,22,24,25,26,27,28,31,32,34, 36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,47,48,49,50.
Those which showed reaction similar to those of dead persons:
f03, 08, 12, 20, 23, 29, 30, 33, 35, 46.
PLEASE CONFIRM.
“Similar”? So, in your professional dowsing opinion, are those numbers alive or dead?
Please make a committment, even if it’s a best guess, before the results are revealed. Otherwise, too much waffling happens after.
I do want to hurt the feelings of any person or offend him/her, whose photo appears in this list. Hence my extended sentence for this list.
Now since you insist, I would like to mention that this is the list which we may treat as dead. No offense intended.
This is now not a scientific test. Since you state the majority are alive, pramanujan can say he sees them all alive, score better than 50% and claim to be psychic.
WHY DO YOU WANT TO GIVE A HINT TO A ‘PSYCHIC’?! :smack:
I don’t.
Before we start the arguing over the results, can you explain the contradiction above?
Was it a full success, or are there errors?
How many do you expect to get right?
Let me explain. I do dowsing for water divining. Success rate 100% till now. This is not my profession. It is my hobby.
Dowsing rod has been used by me out of curiosity for other uses, like location positive/negative energy. While testing on photos of various people alive and dead, the dowsing rod had reacted in the pattern I have explained earlier. For such tests, this may be done most people who can hold the rods properly. For water divining, this is not true for everybody.
These are my observations. I repeat I am not a professional.
This task was taken by me now out of curiosity. But I have the gut feeling that atleast 48 out of these 50 will be correct.
Let us see the answers.
Since no one knows if you are right yet, we’ll be the judge of that.
So you claim that you will be 100% right, minus the “one error” you admit might happen?
50 images less 1 = 49. Can you get 98% right?
Or, computing it a different way, you said that 10 might be dead. That would give us a 78% success rate (allowing for one other error) if those are the only ones you are wrong about. Are you predicting that?
But, as Glee points out, you could guess that all are alive, and get 100% if the pix were not a mixture, so I don’t think this test will prove much of anything anyway. (We don’t know that the original pix were randomized from live and dead piles.)
Nevertheless, tell us how many you expect to get right, as a mininum. Do you agree that if you don’t reach that number, the test was a failure?
ETA: looks like your predicted success is 96%. To repeat, if you don’t reach that number, will the test be a failure? And if not, why not?
OK. Let us take it that way.
Quint, with respect to the Arthur Lintgen situation, where he claimed to be able to tell what was recorded on an LP just by looking at it, at first it sounded a little unlikely or paranormal. But, on closer examination, it was merely someone who had sufficient knowledge of a small number of classical compositions so he could look at the squiggles on the record surface and guess what the sound was like. If Mozart’s Symphony #X was about this long, started with a loud passage followed by a short soft one, it wasn’t hard to tell, since length and dynamics can be readily ascertained if you learn how the patterns look on the record surface. Classical compositions lend themselves best to this treatment, since no matter what orchestra or conductor performs Symphony #X, it will always be about the same length, sequence, and dynamics. Not so with much pop music.
Arthur was unable to tell what the recordings were outside of this very limited repertoire. When Randi found out how it worked, but before Lintgen applied for the MDC, he realized that although impressive, this ability was not paranormal in any matter whatsoever, so it didn’t qualify for the Challenge.
Great. RJKUgly, the ball is now in your court. Can you post the results?
Thanks for the link, very interesting read. i have heard of this story, but that is the first time I’ve read the details. Would have been a very fun test to witness.
Thank you for stating what you expect your power to achieve.
96% is the benchmark then.
If you achieve it, you have succeeded (and I think you should then apply for the Randi Foundation Million Dollars!)
Otherwise it’s a failure, which hopefully would help you understand what powers you possess.
It could be a scientific test even if he knew exactly how many were alive and how many dead. That just has to be taken into account when analyzing the results.
I’m currently at work, so I won’t be able to look at this for at least a couple of hours. I should be able to get back to it by late this afternoon at the latest.
I agree, this was suboptimal, but it’s still possible to have a reasonable test. He doesn’t have to do better than 50%, he has to do better than the rest of us, guessing based on this knowledge. We all get the hint. If we design a guessing algorithm it should be biased towards “alive”, but we don’t know how much to bias it. A 50% mix would make that much easier.
In an ideal world there would be a pool of photos, several 100, split evenly between alive and dead. The test would be on sets of 10, randomly chosen, with no guarantee of a 50/50 ratio. You could then run a series of tests and average over those.
But this is just a preliminary trial, and the testee has given himself a much higher bar to pass.
We should compute a p-value on the results. What’s the probability of doing that well or better if the guesses are randomly matched up with the pictures? I think in this case the probability would be obtained from a hypergeometric distribution (Fisher’s exact test).
One problem: we don’t know that the pictures are divided into dead/alive groups randomly. It appears that it is skewed towards the live category already, and we also don’t know if these are celebrities or total unknowns.
That’s not a problem. Say that eight of the fifty are actually dead. The “diviner” made ten “dead” guesses. We calculate the probability of doing as well as or better than he did if ten “dead” guesses are assigned at random to the fifty pictures. We’re asking whether there is a statistically significant association between his guessing that somebody is dead and that person actually being dead.
That may be an issue, but it’s not a statistical issue.
The diviner made 50 guesses, and put each pix in one of two categories, alive or dead. He expects to be correct on at least 96% of them.
At least if it is scored as I understand it. Each pix is of either a live or dead person. Diviner says that is a live or dead pix. Score: Either 0 or 1. On to the next pic…and do this 50 times.
If chance alone were at work, and the pix randomly chosen from alive/dead groups, we would expect his score to be about 50%.
If the pix are not randomly chosen, all bets are off. Say, for example, that all pix were of live people, and he guessed that all were live. Bingo…100% correct!
OK, unless it was announced (for example) that all were alive. :rolleyes:
All this stuff about hints :eek: shows why the double-blind method of science is the only one to use.
Telemark has given a decent test and also made a good point about the expected result:
… there would be a pool of photos, several 100, split evenly between alive and dead. The test would be on sets of 10, randomly chosen, with no guarantee of a 50/50 ratio. You could then run a series of tests and average over those.
…
the testee has given himself a much higher bar to pass.