Larissa Vilenskaya 19??-2001

Larissa Vilenskaya was killed in an accident on 13 June 2001. Because she was a special figure in the development of understanding across borders and disciplines, especially in aspects of subtle consciousness, I felt that it would be of value to look at the data from the Global Consciousness Project at the time she died. I would like to acknowledge that there are those who might regard analytical assessment of data in this context as disrespectful. My apologies to anyone who is pained, but no disrespect is intended. The spirit of this exploration is much the same as that which we did at Barry Fenn's death. Although Larissa was not associated with the GCP, I think she would have thought the project of value, and I believe she would know that this analysis is undertaken with deep respect. Her close friend, Ed May let us know about the tragedy.

From: Edwin C. May
To: Pdl (E-mail)
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 12:30 AM
Subject: sad news

My dear colleagues,
       
I have terrible news to report to you all.  My long 
time friend, colleague, and co-researcher, Larissa
Vilenskaya (a.k.a. Laura Faith) was struck and killed 
this morning at 08:00 by a train not more than 50 feet 
from our joint office.  This tragic accident happened
because one train had entered the Menlo Park station 
and Larissa, not knowing another North bound train
was on the other track, attempted to cross.
       
It is not my personal grief that encourages me to say 
that I feel she was a National treasure with regard to 
her special knowledge of Russian Shamanism, but rather 
a deep and abiding respect for this woman of warm heart 
and stellar character.   Add to that her technical 
abilities and special skill as an information sleuth to 
see that we were especially blessed to have her as part 
of our LFR research team.
       
I will miss her and the void she has left will be 
difficult to fill.  Please join me in wishing her 
safe travels for whatever comes next.

Ed

The period chosen for the data segment -- a half hour before to a half hour after the accident -- is arbitrary, and reflects our usual practice of identifying a period that surrounds a point event. The Chisquare for this graph is 3366 on 3600 df, and the associated p-value is 0.998. The strong trend, which incorporates data from 31 eggs*, is consistent to a rare degree. Such would happen by chance only a few times in a thousand.

For a little more context, the next figure shows the period from half an hour before the accident to three hours after. The data from all eggs shows a long continuing low-Chi-square trend with a terminal Chisquaree of 12098 on 12600 df and p = 0.9993. Again this is an arbitrarily determined data segment, so that no prediction-based conclusions can be drawn. Yet, we may wonder if there is some association with the tragedy that took the life of Larissa Vilenskaya at this moment in time. Surrounding this period, the data appear to have some large excursions, but they are compatible with the expectations for a random walk.

* Note: Two of the 33 eggs (#223 and #2222) reporting data at this time were malfunctioning, and were excluded from this analysis.