Women's March on Washington, 2017 & 2018

On January 21 2017, the day after the inaguration of Donald Trump as the 45th US President, women and their men and children came together in what appears to be the largest protest demonstration since the 1970s. Several hundred thousand gathered and marched (slowly, because it was packed) peacefully and rallied around speakers and singers in downtown Washington. Below is the mission statement. For more information, go to https://www.womensmarch.com/event-details/

On January 20, 2018 another women's march was organized, building on the earlier motivations plus the more recent #MeToo movement based on a flood of new revelations of sexual abuse in politics, the entertainment business, and sports. The same analysis parameters were used and the resulting graph is shown below.

MISSION & VISION

We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.

OUR MISSION

The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us - immigrants of all statuses, Muslims and those of diverse religious faiths, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, survivors of sexual assault - and our communities are hurting and scared. We are confronted with the question of how to move forward in the face of national and international concern and fear.

In the spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women's rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.

We support the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities. We call on all defenders of human rights to join us. This march is the first step towards unifying our communities, grounded in new relationships, to create change from the grassroots level up. We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society. We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equity for all.

HEAR OUR VOICE.

Specific Hypothesis and Results

The GCP event was set for a 12 hour period from 7 AM to 7 PM Washington time. This period included most events in the US, and part of those in Europe, but probably not the earliest events, in Australia and New Zealand. The result is Chisquare 43634 on 43201 df, for p = 0.0705 and Z = 1.478. This results is in accord with our prediction, and the graph below shows that the tendency for excess positive correlation is fairly persistent through the day.

Interpretation

The following graph is a visual display of the statistical result. It shows the second-by-second accumulation of small deviations of the data from what’s expected. Our prediction is that deviations will tend to be positive, and if this is so, the jagged line will tend to go upward. If the endpoint is positive, this is evidence for the general hypothesis and adds to the bottom line. If the endpoint is outside the smooth curve showing 0.05 probability, the deviation is nominally significant. If the trend of the cumulative deviation is downward, this is evidence against the hypothesis, and is subtracted from the bottom line. For more detail on how to interpret the results, see The Science and related pages, as well as the standard caveat below.

Replication in 2018

The following graph shows the result from 2018, which again brought millions out to march in solidarity not only in the US but around the world, especially in Western Europe.

An Exploration

A friend sent a note suggesting an organized event called 1@1 might register in the GCP network data. The idea was to set a moment of silence at 1:00 pm for people who could not join the march on Washington to join it in spirit. I explained that the GCP instrument needs more time, on the order of a couple of hours to respond, and that our events are typically defined as 6 hours long. Neverthless, I thought it was an interesting question, and did an exploratory analysis of that moment. The result shows a strong and steady trend, albeit in the opposite direction from prediction. Interesting, but not properly interpretable.

Standard caveat

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every success might be largely driven by chance, and every null might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.