New Year 2012-2012

This year again we use the longstanding predictions of a meanshift (squared Stouffer Z) during 10 minutes surrounding midnight, and a variance decrease with a minimum at midnight. These two measures have been assessed for each New Year since 1998-1999, a total of 14 years.

The probability for the squared Stouffer Z for this year is not significant at p=0.330 with Z=0.440.

For the Variance decrease, a comparison with the distribution of 10000 permutations of the data indicates a modest probability of 0.185 and Z=0.898, in accord with the prediction. A simpler calculation of the variance deviation during the 10-minute period surrounding midnight yields an estimated Z of 1.333.

New Year's
2011-2012

In addition to the two figures above representing the results for the current year, a composite over the 14 years is shown for the two measures. The meanshift is slightly positive, with p = 0.349 and Z = 0.387. But the variance decrease prediction calculated by permutation analysis is more strongly supported with a p-value of 0.035 and Z=1.757. A simpler calculation addresses the implicit prediction that the variance will be low around midnight. If we look at midnight +/- 5 minutes, the deviation is similar, with a slightly larger estimated Z-score of 2.113.

New Year's
1999-2012



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