Embassy Bombing, Africa

The first formal prediction for the EGG project was made by RDN, in 1998-08-08, while traveling in Halifax. It concerned the Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, on 1998-08-07 at 07:35 UTC. Upon my return home, prior to examining data, I made the specific predictions described below. These terrorist attacks exemplify a tearing of the social fabric that would shock a global consciousness temporarily. For this particular event, we had only the general outline for predictions: a period of time, say 10 minutes, surrounding the point event, and a period, say a few hours, following the event during which the world becomes conscious of what has happened.

An exploratory analysis based on 15-minute data segments from three eggs looked at the event-period from 07:15 to 07:45, and a three-hour consciousness-spreading period from 07:15 to 10:00. The associated probabilities indicate significant deviations for both time-periods. At that time we did not have sophisticated processing capabilities, but a hand calculation could be made using the automatically generated Z-scores for 15-minute blocks. It indicated significant deviations in both the short period defined for the event: Chi-square 18.039, 9 df, p=0.035, and for the aftermath, inclusive of the event: Chi-square 69.536, 36 df, p=0.00066.

With more sophisticated analytical tools available, it was possible to examine the data in more detail. It should be noted that the network was apparently fragile, so that there are many periods where the eggs were not all running, and the block Z-scores were based on contributions during some intervals from only one or two of the eggs. Nevertheless, the original calculations were confirmed, and the following graphical representation of the analysis shows the striking accumulation of positive deviations in the chisquare across the three-hour period following the bombing. Embassy Bombing, Africa

It goes without saying that this remarkable result was exciting, and we took it as encouragement to go on with the EGG project, full speed ahead.

An additional perspective has just become available, in May, 2001. John Walker has created a "clone" database using pseudorandom numbers. The following figure shows the Embassy data together with the corresponding pseudo data. This is (in May 2001) a first draft, and there are minor differences that I don't yet understand between the calculations for the Eggsummary table used for the data above, and this figure which is calculated diredtly from the database. Embassy Bombing, Africa


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