A couple of stats-savvy readers weigh in on this post. First, from Chad Wayne Seagren, who also provided a spreadsheet:

A chi-squared goodness of fit test reveals a <1% chance that the distribution of zodiac signs among members of congress is due to pure chance. It's not a real powerful test, but for applications like this it usually performs pretty well.

And from Oliver Watson…

The math is rather complicated - so I ran a quick simulation. Seems to be really quite unlikely, I was very surprised - odds are around 6/1000.

So what explains the statistically improbable number of cancers in Congress (insert joke about Congress itself being a form of cancer here)?

Jason Bauer offers this explanation:

…because of the cut-off levels for schools, Cancers enter a grade at an older age then a Taurus would. Thus, they have experiences more likely to influence someone into politics. These include better performance in sports, better grades, more socially out going, etc. then those in their peer group.

Interesting. But I’m not convinced.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 at 5:56 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.