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Beginning about November 4, 2001, I began getting proposals for
an analysis of time periods on the first day of Ramadan.
Lynn Ferguson suggested looking at the data corresponding to the event
promoted by the WorldPuja organization, a moment of meditation as a
way to participate in their live, global webcast at noon on
November 16. The announcement said "daylight savings in effect" but they
also said Eastern Standard Time, so the time is probably 12:00 noon
in New York. There was no length of time specified.
This is 17:00 GMT, and I chose a period of 30 minutes.
For the same day, Al Pasternak suggested an event corresponding
to a call for Muslims to unite in prayer:
"Imagine All Muslims around the world
saying 'ALLAH AKBAR' at the same time. Let us all unite Friday 1st
Ramadan 1422 16th Nov. 2001 for 3
minutes starting 2 PM MAKKAH Time 11 AM GMT. We will be united for
at least 3 minutes please let us try to be ONE NATION."
In a strong sense, both of these organized events were focused on the
same thing, peace and a better future in the world. Both were oriented
to the vision of a single community of people on earth. In the
following graph, they are presented as a sequence, though they were
separated by a few hours.
They are two separate formal events for statistical analysis, though
they are plotted together here.
While recalling that the details of the
typical random walk are noisy and should not be over interpreted,
it is interesting to note that the two halves
of the data sequence have similar shapes, with a
strong incline at the beginning, then a reduced slope later.
The 11:00 event (the Ramadan Muslim prayers) had
Chi-square 1913.3 on 1800 df, for p = 0.031, and the
17:00 event (World Puja) had Chi-square 1753, df 1800, and p = 0.782.
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