World Puja Prayer and Ramadan Meditation, 011116

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.

Prayer and Meditation,
Ramadan, 011116


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