On the balance - Astrology makes accurate predictions

Depending on where you are in the world Astrology is one of the few surviving ancient sciences. India, and China happen to have a stronger ties between Astrology and Science than the western cultures of Europe. Western Astrology has mostly become entertainment, and lacks the academic background needed to create accurate predictions using Astrology. The Western Zodiac is also under developed. In part, over 300 years of academic neglect will halt development, but even a thousand years ago the Chinese Zodiac was far more developed. The main difference between the two is that the Chinese Zodiac can track in as long as 60 year cycles, and as short as 2 hours cycles. Western Astrology has a hard enough time with monthly cycles that normal people can grasp. For the purposes of this debate I will only prove the predictive value of Astrology. I do not intend on proving any claim of causation. The reason for that has to do with the base reason for Astrology. The primary purpose of Astrology is tracking time, and location. The most basic claim that Astrology has is that when, and where you were born has a direct influence on who you will become. I only intend to show that Astrology can predict, and not claim anything about the stars causing anything. Each of my claims will be backed up by scientific research, or raw data that shows statistical significance in the next round. For people born in the UK, and most of Europe, in the months of the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, and to a lesser extent the Dragon children will be more successful at sports in their younger days. If they pick a sport of skill like baseball this will continue into professional sports. If they pick a game of size, and strength they will encounter great adversity if they choose to continue into adulthood. For the same region children born in the months of the Pig, and Rat will have a significant difficulty in school, and in sports in their younger days. Now it might sound like I just picked the strongest sounding Astrological signs, and the weakest. However, there is a very sound and logical reason behind my claims. If you want to see where the Chinese monthly Zodiac lands you can check out this link. http://discoveringmandarin.blogspot.com... My opponent has a nice table, and claims that it shows no statistical significance. The problem with making any statistical claim about US presidents is usually that one lacks a sufficient sample size. There is a magic number that is the minimum that you want to have in an individual grouping, and that number is 30[1]. Unfortunately the way they've been grouped the largest group is only 17 for Libra, and that's with triple counting presidents. That chart can't be used to make much of any claim as it currently is. Berkley clearly would have had a problem doing any statistical analysis when the maximum sun signs is a total of 5 for Scorpio, and Aquarius. If Berkley didn't mention that there study was statistically invalid due to a small sample then they made a serious academic mistake, but since my opponents link to Berkley doesn't actually have anything to do with the astrological signs of Presidents I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe if they were divided based on equinox, and solstice you might get one statistically large enough to say something, but until you have 30 it's a bad idea to use the data to say anything for, or against. It's like the left handed president claim. It's a statistically invalid claim because it uses only 15 presidents and those are split nearly in half. It's impossible to say with a sample size of so few to claim anything. As for my opponents claim that making predictions based on the observations is somehow wrong, or backwards I'd like to point out that is how science works. You make an observation like some people are better at spots. Then you make a prediction based on that observation like their birthday may have something to do with it. Then you test that prediction by surveying the population to see if your prediction pans out. It's also called the Scientific method: Observation, Hypothesis, Prediction, Experimentation, Conclusion [2]. It shouldn't be surprising that some still use the scientific method in astrology since astrology is one of the oldest sciences. [1] http://www.jedcampbell.com... [2] http://www.sciencemadesimple.com...