Saddam Execution Dec 30 2006

Saddam Hussein's execution was announced on Dec 30 2006, about 6 AM local Iraq time (03:00 UTC). Although the event was prominent in the news media, I did not at first think it qualified as the kind of global event that engages the attentions of large numbers of people in an emotionally coherent way. However, it was clearly an event of historical note, and worth assessing to satisfy curiosity, and though I originally intended to add it to our list of exploratory analyses, several people independently suggested it should a formal event. A prediction with adequate time specification was provided, and the event was added to the formal list.

Peter Bancel proposed a period beginning at the time of the hanging and continuing for 14 hours following it (to midday in the US) to capture the spread of news (03:00 to 17:00 UTC). The graph shows no clear trend, with Chisquare of 50385.02 on 50400 df for a p-value of 0.520 and Z = -0.049.

Saddam Execution
Dec 30 2006


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