Trouble with Numbers

Andrew Watson - 1 November 1988

—in the New Scientist, 21 January 1988

Spoon-benders, UFO-spotters and practitioners of numerous alternative medicines challenge the supremacy of orthodox science and medicine. While scientists might brand such heretics as misguided innocents or charlatans, the nagging feeling remains that maybe they are privy to some germ of truth that science will ultimately draw into its fold.

After all, we live in a time when some highly respected physicists believe that a superstring theory of everything might be within their grasp, and they have recently proposed a radical new type of force, the fifth force, to paper over the cracks in Newton’s laws of gravity. It is only right that science and scientists have equally open minds when they confront phenomena that seem to defy rational explanation according to contemporary science. One problem is that practitioners of what might be termed pseudo-sciences (I’m grasping for a suitable generic term) sometimes do little to help themselves. Carefully controlled experiments and trials, so often lacking, would do wonders for their credibility in the eyes of many in the scientific community.

One ancient discipline generally regarded as immiscible with conventional science is astrology, equated nowadays with horoscopes in newspapers and magazines. A recent edition of a popular women’s magazine, aimed at the young, dynamic, health, fitness and fashion conscious, contained a horoscopic tour de force, outlining expectations for every star sign for each month of the new year. Some of its predictions deserve closer inspection.

Many of the predictions are of the kind everybody expects from horoscopes. Women born under the sign of Cancer, for instance, are told that “little by little, you’re gaining in self-confidence as you overcome small obstacles in both your personal life and at work.” Now who could argue with that? But then, perhaps there’s not much there to argue about.

Women born under Cancer have much more to look forward to in 1988 than improved self-confidence, however. Under the heading “Love,” the horoscope claims: “In January, a debonair European helps you pass the summer nights.” Now think about that. The world’s population is 5 billion, which makes for 2.5 billion women or about 208 million women of each star sign. Taking the population of Europe as 680 million, assume there are 340 million European men, which, for the purposes of calculation, can all be considered to be debonair. That means that 61 per cent of European males can look forward to passing the summer nights with a woman born under Cancer. And it’s no use dropping all those too young or too old to join the fun, as the proportions remain constant.

Think of the logistics of shipping that many European men to far flung corners of the world. The European economy must surely collapse. And that’s just in January.

Astute readers may have been puzzled by a summer which occurs in January. All is explained by the fact that I have been referring to an Australian magazine. As I can’t pretend to know much about horoscopes, perhaps I should assume that they apply only to certain geographic regions. So, to be fair, let’s pretend that the prediction concerns only women in Australia. Even so, Australia’s 16 million people might be expected to include around 670 000 female Cancers, all hoping to be entertained. Given that January is a notoriously difficult time of year to get flights in and out of Australia, it seems that either the airlines will have to lay on fleets of extra aircraft or it really will be a long hot summer for migrant European men.

There are plenty of other ludicrous predictions. Libran women can expect to visit France next year, and be wined and dined by a “sauve Frenchman.” Is that all 208 million Libran women or just a few hundred thousand from Australia? And on 22 February, Libran women.can expect to visit their gynaecologists, who should perhaps be bracing themselves for a busy day.

Perhaps it’s wrong to take these predictions at face value and do these sums, but there’s no warning before or after the horoscope along the lines of “Danger: simple calculation can induce ridicule.” Much as I might like to approach astrology and horoscopes with an open mind, at this level they are hard to swallow. But then, perhaps that’s not surprising.

Andrew Watson recently fled to Australia from the School of Mathematics and Physics, University of East Anglia.