World Cup Soccer 2002

A number of people suggested that the great interest in the World Cup Soccer matches in the summer of 2002 would show up in the GCP data. Though my experience in FieldREG experiments suggests that sporting events are not unequivocal as sources of resonance and coherent consciousness, it seemed desirable to test the notion formally. To do this, I asked one of the correspondents, Tobias Bodine, to pick a particularly good sample according to his intuitions, and he suggested the England/Argentina match. Shortly thereafter, I received a note from Pedro P.B. de Oliveira, who hosts an egg in Brazil, suggesting that the great victory of Brazil, becoming the world champions, would be a strong candidate.

The following figures show the actual results. They are more in line with my expectations than those of my friends. This should not, of course be taken as a confirmation of the notion that great sporting events do not affect the EGG, but as sample results that are relevant but not a final answer to the question. The data in these experiments are noisy, and no small number of tests can be conclusive. In any case, two people, James Spottiswoode and Dean Radin, have proposed to do a thorough and comprehensive look at the WCS data, so we should stay tuned.

The Argentina/England match had chisquare of 7206.3 on 7200 df for a p-value of 0.477, and the Brazil win had chisquare of 6485.5 on 6480 df for p = 0.478. Remarkably similar outcomes, by chance, and awfully close to chance in both cases.

World Cup Soccer 2002

World Cup Soccer 2002


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