Exploratory Analyses for Y2K, New Year, 1999 to 2000

The intended analysis for this prediction requires the use of data from all eggs and all timezones. Data are available from 27 eggs across the 24-hour period of celebration around the world. Following George's precedent for the JAM analysis, all 36 zones with integer or half-hour differences from GMT were used for the following figure. In contrast to the 22 egg, 10 timezone analysis, the deviation is positive, with a Chisquare of 622.251 on 600 degrees of freedom, with an associated p-value of 0.257. This analysis is considered formal, but it has not yet been independently cross-checked.

Independent prediction, Smoothed Variance, Etc.

Dean Radin postulated that an increased coherence will be present in the data, generated in response to the coherent interactions of large numbers of people celebrating the Y2K transition together. This conception leads to a prediction that the spread, or variance of the REG data should be decreased around the moment of greatest engagement. The obvious prediction is for that moment to be just at midnight, with a buildup before and some lingering period of continuing celebration after. The general analysis procedure uses a measure of the variance across all eggs, averaged across time zones, and smoothed with a sliding window, typically 5 minutes wide.

Confirmatory Explorations, RDN

The figures representing Dean Radin's analyses certainly look as if something is going on around midnight. To gain perspective, I performed several analyses of a generally similar nature, focusing on the question whether the New Year's midnight seemed to be correlated with "special" features in the EGG data. I could not duplicate Dean's analysis exactly (probably because he used a slightly less complete dataset), but by trying a variety of analytic modes, found an impressive array of indicators that parallel his finding and confirm an unusual feature or tendency just at midnight. The situation is far more complicated than is obvious, however. Most of these analyses are sensitive to small changes in the parameters and such factors as the inclusiveness of the dataset. Although this may suggest that the indicators are artifactual and selectively chosen, I think there are far too many and that they are too precisely aligned with the nominal Y2K "target" to be ignored. Fortunately, the data are available for downloading by any interested analyst. They bear examination.

Smoothed Variance, 27 eggs, 24 and 36 timezones

This figure shows midnight plus and minus 15 minutes, with data from 27 eggs and 24 timezones. It is a simpler and more direct implementation of the notion that variability of the data may diminish near midnight. The figure plots the mean across timezones of the variance taken across the 27 eggs for each second, smoothed with a 300-second window. This particular result looks like a striking confirmation of the hypothesis, but if the scale is expanded to include ±30 minutes, another, larger spike appears at 18 minutes after midnight. Furthermore, if the number of timezones is increased to 36 so as to include the several half-hour offset timezones, the picture changes radically. There is no spike at midnight, but instead, a decreasing trend beginning about 5 minutes before and ending about 2 minutes after midnight. Note that this behavior of the variance is entirely consistent with Dean's prediction, even though it does not maximize at midnight.

Median Squared Deviation, 27 eggs, 24 and 36 timezones

Another perspective plots changes in the deviation of the mean trial value across eggs over the time surrounding the Y2K transition. The cumulative sum of the median of the squared deviation of the mean from its empirical expectation is plotted, revealing a striking spike at midnight. Interpreted literally, this suggests a brief but very sharp increase in the absolute deviations of trial outcomes just at the moment of greatest engagement in the New Year's celebration.

Notably, this spike is present with little change in its prominence in both the 24-timezone and the 36-timezone datasets, shown in the following two figures. A permutation analysis of the 36-zone case shows that the maximum deviation is not extremely rare, with a greater value appearing somewhere in 90.3% of the permuted datasets. The placement of the spike so close to midnight (it maximizes at 24 seconds after) is, however, quite unlikely; a 4000-permutation analysis yields a p-value of 0.022 of a spike occuring this close or closer to midnight. The combined probability of a spike this large and this close is p = 0.020, suggesting that we might expect to find such impressive structure merely by chance only twice in 100 repetitions of the Y2K experiment. The corresponding numbers for the 24-zone dataset are similar, yielding a combined p-value of 0.017.

A prediction was made that the high (red curve)and low (blue curve) population timezones would show a difference in the cumulative deviations, based on such a finding last year. The following two figures show this split for 27 eggs across 24 and 36 timezones, respectively. There is a substantial difference in both cases, but interpretation is difficult because the direction of the difference is opposite for 24 and 36 zones, with the 24 zone dataset showing the predicted positive difference (green curve), whereas the results for the 36 zone dataset are opposite to the predicted direction. The difference is significant in the 24 zone case (Chisquare = 663.29, df = 200, p = 0.037), but is not significant for the 36 zone dataset (Chisqare = 577.22, df = 600, p = 0.741). In parallel with the main prediction, the 36 zone results are used for the formal results compilation.