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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> Chinese Birth Chart
        
(Message started by: Sir Col on Jul 12^th, 2005, 3:19pm)

Title: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Sir Col on Jul 12^th, 2005, 3:19pm

Check out this:
http://www.earthbaby.com/fun_stuff__ancient_chinese_bi.cfm

Apparently it's 93% accurate?!

[e]
Edited to replace broken link. But doing a quick search in Google, I found the following link that suggests the accuracy has now risen to 99%!
http://www.webwomb.com/chinesechart.htm
[/e]

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Noke Lieu on Jul 12^th, 2005, 6:08pm

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...?

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Sir Col on Jul 13^th, 2005, 10:11am

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. ;)

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Grimbal on Jul 14^th, 2005, 1:38am

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. ;D
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?

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Icarus on Jul 27^th, 2005, 5:59pm

on 07/14/05 at 01:38:22, Grimbal wrote:

Of course, the months were not those we know now.

A telling point: This chart, supposedly concocted in China over 700 years ago uses European months?

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Krissy Rouse on Aug 20^th, 2005, 2:44pm

The birth chart was right for both of my kids! And almost all of my friends...93% accurate? I would agree!

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by rmsgrey on Aug 22^nd, 2005, 9:49am

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...)

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by sheep on Oct 10^th, 2005, 4:38pm

on 07/14/05 at 01:38:22, Grimbal wrote:

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. :'(

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by MrUdon on Oct 15^th, 2005, 5:45am

Is there another thread or link to this Chinese birth chart??

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by towr on Oct 16^th, 2005, 7:40am

on 10/15/05 at 05:45:12, MrUdon wrote:

Is there another thread or link to this Chinese birth chart??

The first post would be a likely location to look for it.
And unless the link has been invalidated, you can find it there..

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by MrUdon on Oct 17^th, 2005, 1:26am

Oh ic...then i guess i cant have a look then :(

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by towr on Oct 17^th, 2005, 2:26am

on 10/17/05 at 01:26:31, MrUdon wrote:

Oh ic...then i guess i cant have a look then :(

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.

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Icarus on Oct 17^th, 2005, 4:38pm

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! ::)

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by BNC on Oct 17^th, 2005, 5:30pm

The original link seems to be working again.

Just in case, I've attched a zipped version of it.

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by MrUdon on Oct 18^th, 2005, 3:48am

Thanks, yer u were rite, the original link started workin. I must of tried at a bad time, but yea thanks BNC

Title: Re: Chinese Birth Chart
Post by Icarus on Oct 18^th, 2005, 6:01pm

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.