On the balance - Astrology makes accurate predictions

I didn't really ignore my opponents murder sources. It's more that I expected him to realize that all 3 sources made the exact same mistake. The Analysis of the Presidents is invalid because you do not have enough of them to divide into groups of at least 30 for Zodiac analysis. Anyone attempting to do any statistical analysis claims on US presidents is going to have the same issue whether or not they're using Chinese, Mayan, or Western Astrology. There is just too few to make any claim for, or against. Nvwoa.nl made the same mistake of only having a sample size of 77. Larger than the presidents, but only has one group that can be statistically analyzed in January. Without another group to compare it to the statistics will be invalid. Astrologyresearchjournal.com does a bit of a better job, but you have to actually read their work. The first part you should pay attention to is under Test Parameters. It clearly states, "An individual group of this size is too small to run meaningful statistical tests." In other words they are openly admitting that there is going to be a problem with their results. Then under The Claim Being Made Under This Study it starts off stating "This is a work still in progress so no claim is being made (or can be made) as to whether or not there is any validity to astrology". In other words my opponents source is actually making no claim at all.Honestly, I expected my opponent to take more than a few hours to respond. I've been caught at a moment with most of my sources being saved on a different machine. So I'll just have to reconstruct, and see if I can get remote access since I won't have direct access until after the time limit has lapsed.Now lets examine my claim that kids at a particular time of year will be better at sports than other kids born at a different part of the year in the UK, and Europe. For this we'll be using the UEFA for their 2010 tournament, and European population data. The population data will consist of about 51 million samples for the population, and about 4 thousand players. What we expect if the date of ones birth has no effect on their participation is that if 8 percent of the population is born in January then only 8 percent will be playing the tournament. If it has an effect it will be significantly more or less. So what does this look like? Fortunately you can either do the work yourself, or look at this nice little chart that illustrates things nicely. You could also take the word of the reputable economists the wrote the book Freakonomics. As you can see January, February, March, and a bit of April so a significant swing towards more players being born at those time periods which happen to be the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, and Dragon signs in the Chinese Zodiac. The under performing months just happen to be the months that correspond to the Pig, and Rat. Otherwise known as November, and December.That covers the bulk of my claim about performance in sports in one's youth. Pig, and Rat have an added penalty that they are actually more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, and a slew of other psychological conditions[3].Now to understand my claim of Baseball, or Football you have to understand that actual cause. This is actually the part where Astrology fails. It fails because it claims that the cause the Heavens, and the Earth. Where you're at in relation to a lay line, and which stars you're under when you're born. This is the part that cannot be tested because removing stars from the sky, and moving a lay line is impractical. However, this doesn't affect it's uses at predicting because the causes happen to be when and where you are born has a direct effect on who you'll be.It's called the Relative Age Effect, and put bluntly the arbitrary dates we pick as cut off dates for school, and sports ends up having positive, and negative effects. Children born in January are a year older than their classmates born in December. They are given an advantage due to hitting puberty earlier, and then because they dominate their classmates they are given better encouragement, and coaching. The Relative Age Effect persists if the sport is like Baseball, but if it's a sport that relies on physical size that doesn't set in until after schooling like with the NFL then the advantage goes away[4].It's not hard to see that we've been doing this for some time, and even though astrology is usually wrong about the cause it's predictive value isn't invalid.Now look at the Ancient Mayan culture. A good portion of their astrology from the Dresden Codex is based on Venus. For them Venus symbolized good times, and war. For war it's a rather literal sign. You can tell a bunch of uneducated soldier to go to a city, and when they see Venus rise they should attack. Without any other form of communication you can have a nationwide simultaneous attack. The good times happen to be a result of the Post War Economic Boom and Bust cycle that occurs with war. If wars happen to occur on a periodic schedule they'll result in a predictable economic cycle as well. My opponent is making a very bad assumption. He assumes that Astrology creates their charts, and predictions first. This is false. The charts come first to track time. Correlations are found in the population in relation to time, and those correlations become the predictions. Now some make the mistake of assuming correlation means causation, but I can't really fault Astrologers for that. After all it wasn't that long ago that Science made the claim that Ice Cream Kills Kids[5] because of the same kind of fallacy.[3] http://www.cmaj.ca...[4] http://www.slate.com... [5] http://vimeo.com...