(CNN) -- Nelson Mandela's willingness to forgive and forget helped
peacefully end an era of white domination in his native South Africa.
But as news of his death spread, mourners there and around the world
professed that he, himself, would never be forgotten.
"Mandela's biggest legacy ... was his remarkable lack of bitterness and
the way he did not only talk about reconciliation, but he made
reconciliation happen in South Africa," said F.W. de Klerk, South
Africa's last white president before giving way to Mandela, the
country's first black leader.
South Africa's current leader announced late Thursday that, after years
suffering from health ailments, the man known widely by his clan name of
Madiba died at 8:50 p.m. (1:50 p.m. ET) surrounded by family.
He was 95.
"He is now resting. He is now at peace," President Jacob Zuma said late
Thursday. "Our nation has lost its greatest son. Our people have lost a
father."
Not surprisingly, many people suggested Mandela's passing should be on
our list of global events. The GCP event was set for 24 hours,
beginning almost an hour before his
death, with a time period modeled on Ted Kennedy, Michael Jackson, and
similar to Pope John. The result is Chisquare 87332.851 on 86400 df, for
p = 0.013 and Z = 2.238.
It is interesting to look at the 24 hour graph of the GCP DOT
excursions for late Dec 5 to Dec 6. It shows a large proportion of
orange and red,
indicating high coherence or correlation on an ongoing average basis.
This is consonant with the persistent positive deviation in the formal
analysis.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish
signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be
largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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