Preliminary investigation towards an astrological survey of prominent tennis players
– 14 June 2009
– Combined with follow-up article “First Results”; and holding footnote added, January 7th 2016
This afternoon, I have taken a preliminary investigative step towards an astrological survey of prominent tennis players, using a sample limited to the current Top 100-ranked players on the WTA Tour. Without times and places of birth for all of them, I have had to cast aside the Moon sign data since too many of them are uncertain as a result of the Moon changing signs from one day to the next, and I have also ignored the Saturn sign data because it is much too generation-dependent given the limited career-span of tennis players and the long 29 year cycle of Saturn.
The raw data is ordered by current world ranking from 1 to 100. It was drawn from the Rosicrucian Ephemeris 1900-2000. Originally I prepared this in an equal-spaced font so it was tidier, but that cannot be maintained on Facebook. In fact, even when I added in extra spaces Facebook deleted them all as soon as I posted it, so it is basically impossible to display the tables here, but I’d be happy to email them on request to anyone interested – also showing the tally count for each sign placement of Sun through to Jupiter.
The next logical step I feel would be to track back in history and add all former Top 100 players as far back as online records go to the sample. It may also be interesting to note distinctions in the prevalence of certain placements among Top 25 players or Top 10 players as compared with non-Top-25 but Top 100.
Obviously as this stands this is far too small a sample to be useful, but it gives a small idea as to what is possible in a few hours’ research with no computer programs to hand to assist. Anyone wanting a copy of the raw data and count, please just message me with your email address if I don’t have it. Thanks!
First results of astrological survey of prominent professional tennis players (sample of 580)
– 17 June 2009
After collecting as many reliable data as I could using the Internet, I reached a total sample size of 580 current and former Top 100 world-ranked women’s professional tennis players born on or after January 1st 1960. This is the vast majority of the entire set meeting these criteria. Unfortunately, failures in the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA)’s record-keeping on the Internet result in the exclusion of a number of players in this set who reached their peak rankings before 1986, and there have been further technical challenges involved in the quest to eke out the greatest possible portion of the total set under study; but no effort has been spared to include as many players whose rankings could be verified as possible using all the resources the Internet collectively has to offer.
At this stage I have collected only WTA players’ data in order to ensure that I am at all times comparing like for like. An obvious next step in the survey would be to perform an equivalent survey on ATP professionals, subject to like availability of data. It occurs to me that because tennis is a very physically demanding game, it is possible that biological and psychological differences between the sexes will lend themselves to not entirely similar astrological compositions of the sets of male and female players, even allowing for random variations, but this remains to be tested.
So far I have limited my analysis of the sample to a mere count of the placements of the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars in the different signs of the tropical zodiac at birth. In the absence of full place and time of birth data, I do not have sufficiently reliable information to conduct any analysis of Moon sign placements, and likewise all consideration of elevation and other matters broadly related to house placements is completely impossible. But there should be potential to further investigate the distribution of interplanetary aspects between the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, all of whose positions I have noted for every player to the nearest whole degree in the absence of a precise time of birth.
I cannot print the raw data for each player here because it requires an equal-spaced font to display correctly, a facility that Facebook does not offer. But as indicated previously, I would be happy to provide the raw data on request for verification and analysis purposes to any interested astrologer who agrees to respect my authorship of this study and not to further distribute it while it remains a work in progress.
In a set of 580 dates of birth picked entirely at random, the expected distribution of Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars signs should on average be as close to exactly 1/12th as makes no difference, although it must equally be noted that Mercury’s and Venus’s geocentric positions are both relatively closely tied to those of the Sun, Mercury always being within one sign from the Sun and Venus within two from the Sun, so it is important to bear in mind that there is some mutual dependency in these statistics, whereas those of Mars are completely independent from the others.
580 divided by 12 gives 48.33R as a theoretical average to be produced by chance alone for the number of instances of each factor in the set.* Because in practice several of the placements for each of the planets (and the Sun) under study are uncertain owing to the celestial body concerned having changed signs on those dates, the average of the reported incidences shown clearly within one sign or another will be very slightly less than this. The uncertain placements are also listed separately.
It must also of course be borne in mind that any particular actual set of 580 dates of birth picked entirely at random would exhibit random deviations from the theoretical average for all such random sets of 48.33R incidences of each celestial body under study in each sign. For this reason, any data that are fairly close in number to the average without being directly on it in this study cannot be presumed statistically significant.
Results for Sun:
Aries: 50
Taurus: 48
Gemini: 57
Cancer: 52
Leo: 43
Virgo: 47
Libra: 43
Scorpio: 37
Sagittarius: 41
Capricorn: 41
Aquarius: 50
Pisces: 62
Cancer/Leo cusp date: 1
Leo/Virgo cusp date: 1
Libra/Scorpio cusp date: 1
Scorpio/Sagittarius cusp date: 2
Capricorn/Aquarius cusp date: 2
Aquarius/Pisces cusp date: 2
Results for Mercury:
Aries: 43
Taurus: 53
Gemini: 40
Cancer: 49
Leo: 33
Virgo: 41
Libra: 47
Scorpio: 49
Sagittarius: 38
Capricorn: 52
Aquarius: 62
Pisces: 61
Aries/Taurus cusp date: 2
Gemini / Cancer cusp date: 3
Cancer / Leo cusp date: 1
Virgo / Libra cusp date: 1
Libra / Scorpio cusp date: 2
Scorpio / Sagittarius cusp date: 2
Capricorn / Aquarius cusp date: 1
Aquarius / Pisces cusp date: 1
Results for Venus:
Aries: 62
Taurus: 35
Gemini: 56
Cancer: 46
Leo: 43
Virgo: 42
Libra: 34
Scorpio: 50
Sagittarius: 41
Capricorn: 53
Aquarius: 55
Pisces: 49
Aries/Taurus cusp date: 1
Taurus / Gemini cusp date: 3
Gemini / Cancer cusp date: 1
Leo / Virgo cusp date: 2
Libra / Scorpio cusp date: 1
Scorpio / Sagittarius cusp date: 1
Sagittarius / Capricorn cusp date: 2 Capricorn / Aquarius cusp date: 1
Aquarius / Pisces cusp date: 1
Pisces / Aries cusp date: 1
Results for Mars:
Aries: 39
Taurus: 50
Gemini: 54
Cancer: 46
Leo: 60
Virgo: 63
Libra: 39
Scorpio: 43
Sagittarius: 44
Capricorn: 56
Aquarius: 44
Pisces: 31
Sagittarius / Capricorn cusp date: 1
Capricorn / Aquarius cusp date: 1
Gemini / Cancer cusp date: 2
Cancer / Leo cusp date: 5
Pisces / Aries cusp date: 1
Virgo / Libra cusp date: 1
Preliminary remarks:
There are some marked unevennesses in the distributions of the different celestial bodies among the signs of the tropical zodiac at birth in the sample of 580 highly-ranked women’s tennis players born since 1960 under study. Most extreme is the approximate 2:1 ratio in the distribution of Mars placements in either Virgo or Leo as compared with Pisces. Venus is over 75% more likely to be in Aries than in either Libra or Taurus, the two signs of its traditional domicile. Mercury is found 80% more often in either Pisces or Aquarius than in Leo. The Sun is found 67% more often in Pisces than in Scorpio, and also seems to be boosted somewhat in Gemini.
The sample is still smaller than would be ideal, although it is as big as it can get using the available data, though a few new players will continue to enter the Top 100 for the first time every year. I have just been reading material published by a group of researchers called ‘Astro Investigators’ which recommends a minimum theoretical average of 50 instances of each celestial body in each sign. This would correspond with a sample size of 600, just 20 more than the one here. The same article also describes the chi-square calculation procedure with a view to assessing the probability that results are not the product of chance. I tested it out on a few of the more extreme distributions in this study. The deviation of Mars in Pisces from the expected norm corresponds with a chi-square of 6.214, to the nearest three decimal places (it might in theory be very slightly less than this if the one uncertain Pisces-Aries cusp-date placement turns out to be in Pisces, increasing the distribution of Mars in Pisces within the overall sample from 31 to 32). This equates to a probability of more than 98% (chi-square of 6 corresponds to 98%) that the result is not the product of chance. While this is good, it is not close enough to being perfect to satisfy hardened sceptics. The only way to resolve this is to further increase the sample size. I do not want to dilute the study by accepting data from players who tried but failed to reach the Top 100, or players born in the 1950s or earlier who played in a bygone era when the style of the game was much different. (There might on analysis already be some differences between typical successful players of the 1980s and those of the 2000s.) Ultimately the study might have to continue on its existing terms for decades into the future before any of its findings are broadly accepted as scientific.
In the meantime, there is plenty of scope for further analysis. I plan for example to analyse the distribution of peak ranking positions among the members of each ‘celestial body x in sign y’-delimited group. It could emerge that certain placements are more likely to be found in those who reach the Top 10 or in those who (conversely) fail to reach the Top 50. All of this will take further time and research, but I need to get back to more urgent work again from tomorrow. As always, comments welcome.
* – Post-script, November 2014: Since this blog article was informally published in June 2009, I have learned much more about the natural unevenness in the distribution of Mercury, Venus and Mars among the zodiacal signs and conducted further research on male tennis players. Thus, the statement this asterisk refers to is inaccurate, and this blog post must be regarded in its historical context as the first informal announcement of results from ongoing research and not considered a definitive analysis of those results. Once I have the time to sort through my papers around here, I should be able to locate the original paperwork for both initial research and the later research on male tennis players and prepare a much more thorough presentation and analysis.
*****
– Update, 7th January 2016: I have been too busy so far to sort through my papers and locate the original research on which this survey was based, or the follow-up one on male tennis players. However, I have not forgotten and intend to get to this eventually.
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