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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.
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