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Topic: Chinese Birth Chart (Read 8164 times) |
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Noke Lieu
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #1 on: Jul 12th, 2005, 6:08pm » |
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Obviously 21 year old mothers only give birth to boys in January.
And apparently, I am supposed to be a girl. Two of my colleagues, both female, were supposed to have been male. Hmmmn. Methinks it's not as good as they profess...?
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a shade of wit and the art of farce.
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Sir Col
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #2 on: Jul 13th, 2005, 10:11am » |
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Statistically (meaning independent of any mystical properties) it should be close to 50% accurate, but let's be fair, it's allowed to be wrong 7 times out of 100, so we can't reject it just yet. 
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Grimbal
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #3 on: Jul 14th, 2005, 1:38am » |
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The chinese had a different way to express age. A child is born with age 1. At chinese new year, everybody gets one year older. It counts how many different years you have lived in. And yes, a one week old baby coul be age 2. Of course, the months were not those we know now.
So it could explain why it fails. I mean, if it does. 
And of course, the time of conception is never as certain as the time of birth. You can correct the result by re-estimating the time of conception.
Anyway, considering how important it is to chinese to have male descendency, what does it mean that they decided to burry it and never to see it again?
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| « Last Edit: Jul 14th, 2005, 1:45am by Grimbal » |
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Icarus
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #4 on: Jul 27th, 2005, 5:59pm » |
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on Jul 14th, 2005, 1:38am, Grimbal wrote:| Of course, the months were not those we know now. |
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A telling point: This chart, supposedly concocted in China over 700 years ago uses European months?
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"Pi goes on and on and on ...
And e is just as cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When their digits are reversed? " - Anonymous
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Krissy Rouse
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The birth chart was right for both of my kids! And almost all of my friends...93% accurate? I would agree!
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rmsgrey
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #6 on: Aug 22nd, 2005, 9:49am » |
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I appear to be on the cusp of boy and girl, but my sister is apparently a boy, and my brother a girl, which gives an approximate success rate of about 15% for our three samples...
[e]If you say it's 93 % accurate, then there's only a 1.4% chance of it being wrong in at least two of three cases - roughly 1 in 70. From that data, I'd want to take a long hard look at their raw data and their data collection techniques before accepting their claim (for instance, how is date of conception being calculated - if the birth chart is widely accepted, I'd expect conception dates to be calculated by working backwards from the chart...)
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| « Last Edit: Aug 22nd, 2005, 9:57am by rmsgrey » |
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sheep
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yo yo yo. im radical, man...
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #7 on: Oct 10th, 2005, 4:38pm » |
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on Jul 14th, 2005, 1:38am, Grimbal wrote:The chinese had a different way to express age. A child is born with age 1. At chinese new year, everybody gets one year older. It counts how many different years you have lived in. And yes, a one week old baby coul be age 2. Of course, the months were not those we know now.
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this is random but my sister, born half an hour before new years, was age two before she turned an hour old!
and the link doesnt work anymore. 
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MrUdon
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I didn’t lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #8 on: Oct 15th, 2005, 5:45am » |
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Is there another thread or link to this Chinese birth chart??
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #9 on: Oct 16th, 2005, 7:40am » |
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on Oct 15th, 2005, 5:45am, MrUdon wrote:| Is there another thread or link to this Chinese birth chart?? |
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The first post would be a likely location to look for it.
And unless the link has been invalidated, you can find it there..
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Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
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MrUdon
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #10 on: Oct 17th, 2005, 1:26am » |
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Oh ic...then i guess i cant have a look then 
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #11 on: Oct 17th, 2005, 2:26am » |
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on Oct 17th, 2005, 1:26am, MrUdon wrote:| Oh ic...then i guess i cant have a look then |
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Sir Col edited the post yesterday to add another (for the moment non-broken) link. So you could try that one, or look for it with google.
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Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
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Icarus
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #12 on: Oct 17th, 2005, 4:38pm » |
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Hmmm... I recall (vaguely) that it got my sex right before. But this calendar definitely says I should be female. I didn't realize I was so deformed! 
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"Pi goes on and on and on ...
And e is just as cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When their digits are reversed? " - Anonymous
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BNC
Uberpuzzler
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The original link seems to be working again.
Just in case, I've attched a zipped version of it.
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How about supercalifragilisticexpialidociouspuzzler [Towr, 2007]
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MrUdon
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #14 on: Oct 18th, 2005, 3:48am » |
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Thanks, yer u were rite, the original link started workin. I must of tried at a bad time, but yea thanks BNC
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Icarus
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: Chinese Birth Chart
« Reply #15 on: Oct 18th, 2005, 6:01pm » |
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I can't find anything about this on Snope's, but I'm positive it is a hoax.
As has already been noted, this supposedly 700 year old chinese chart uses the Gregorian calendar. (Perhaps someone more aquainted with chinese history and culture can better decide if this is reasonable. It is certainly possible that the Gregorian calendar was in use in China in the 14th century, but it does not seem likely to me that it would be.)
And, although the ancient chinese counted age differently from us, this is not mentioned in either posting of the chart.
I suspect this continues mostly because by chance, for the occasional small sample, it will be highly successful. Suppose 10000 people try it, each checking the sexes of 10 people they know against the chart. For ~10 of the 10000, it will be 100% correct. For ~ 100 of the 10000, it will be 90% correct. For ~ 500 of the 10000, it will be 80% correct.
So about 6% of the people attempting this are going to find a high success rate and be impressed. Another 10-20% will find a moderately good success rate and be interested. The remainder will recognize it as the hoax it is and dismiss it.
But what happens then? Those who dismiss it mostly just move on. A few report their results to others, but those negative results don't travel far before they are ignored. On the other hand, for those few (such as Krissy Rouse) for whom chance has resulted in a high success rate, they are very impressed, and are likely to widely distribute the chart to others, giving glowing testimonials to its accuracy. So the chart keeps being perpetuated.
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"Pi goes on and on and on ...
And e is just as cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When their digits are reversed? " - Anonymous
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