Proj Aug Results (Section 3): Timing

When we first began collecting dreams for Project August back in April of this year, right off the bat, we received a huge hit on a dream that was intended for August. The dream was about a tornado, which then manifested in real life exactly where the tornado was dreamed.

The question that followed, of course, was whether it is impossible to dream about a particular period of time, or whether this dream would also take place a second time in the intended month. With that single data point, either Project August was a hoax, or dreams could “come true” more than once.

Even though a tornado did not reappear in NW Arkansas during August, we now have enough data to be able to answer both questions. We already answered the second question in Section 2 of the report by describing how many Proj Aug predictions received multiple hits.

But what about the first question? Is Project August a hoax? What if the intention to dream about August made no difference? How could we ascertain this answer?

The Famous Bell Curve

The researchers kept track of all the Project August news dates (i.e., the dates of when each hit took place) and divided the calendar into weeks. They then plotted how many hits took place each week, and the results are quite astonishing (see Figure 3.1).

 

Figure 3.1

Stats_Figure 3.1

From the graph, we see what appears to be a standard bell-shaped curve, albeit negatively skewed because we haven’t yet seen September’s results. Based on this graph, it is not difficult to see when the bulk of the hits occurred: in August 2014

It is important to note that there are a couple of considerations for why this graph appears like a bell curve. First, there could have been a researcher bias when choosing which news headlines would be considered a hit. In other words, the researchers might have subconsciously “loosened” the criteria in August because they knew that August was the target month. To minimize this in the future, follow-on researchers should pick a random month and have “blinded” judges looking for Proj Aug headlines in that random month. In other words, they are told the target month is the month in which they look for headlines, but in reality, they are looking for headlines to fulfill August 2014 predictions. That would be the way to address how much bias was induced in this project.

But certainly not all of this bell-shaped pattern can be explained by researcher bias. With the raw data, we might be able to argue that an intention to dream about a specific time period doesn’t guarantee a dream about that period, but it statistically moves the dream toward that period.

We saw the same thing from Project Uno, which was a sub-test of Project August where the dreamers would intend to dream about August 1st, hence the name Uno. The results were very successful, although the data pool was extremely small (just 6 people were willing to show their dream publicly).

In Project Uno, 100% of the predictions came true with very accurate scores (all above 4.0, and 3 with a max score of 5.0). Of those 6 people, 2 hit right on August 1st and the others were just days off with an equal dispersion on either side. 2 dreamers were early (7 and 8 days early), while 2 dreamers were late (10 and 15 days). This was also an unmistakable mini-bell curve also, although slightly skewed in the opposite direction from Proj Aug.

Closer Look on Proj Aug’s Bell Curve

Looking at Figure 3.2, we see that the average date of all the 168 news hits was July 30, 2014, just a couple of days prior to the target month. The Median (which is just the very middle date in the ordered list of all hits) fell inside the month of August (the 7th to be exact).

The Standard Deviation was very large, almost spanning an entire month (SD = 24.96). Kurtosis measures the “peakedness” of the distribution. 1.58 is fairly low, which indicates a sharper shape closer to the mean. The negative Skewness is indicated visually in Figure 3.1, where the tail on the left side is longer than the tail on the right.

Figure 3.2

Mean 7/30/14
Median 8/7/14
Mode 8/13/14
Standard Deviation 24.96844
Kurtosis 1.583452
Skewness -1.32725
Range 124 days
Count 168 hits

 

 

Other date-related statistics

The researchers also found other relevant statistics about the dates. The average number of days between the source event (a dream or linguistics) and the real-life headline was 50 days.

For those hits that occurred before the target month, the average number of days prior to August was 27 days (extremely close to a lunar cycle).

The number of hits within the month of August was 110 and the number of hits before August was 58 (roughly half).

Perhaps somewhat inconsequential to anyone except future DreamForecasters, the average number of days from the source event to putting it into a predictive headline was 8 days. Also, the average number of days from PA published prediction to the actual headline was 41 days.

 

Summary and Implications

– It is our hypothesis that setting an intention to dream about a specific target date moves the “typical” precognition window towards the intended time period, but it does not guarantee that the dream was for that date window. Note: if our data can be generalized to the greater public, then according to Proj Aug, one would have about a 65% chance of being in the window with an intention to dream about a certain month. To dream about a specific day will be a lower probability of being “right,” but the window will be shorter than if a month or week was chosen. According to Proj Uno, one would have about 30% chance of being spot on the intended day, but Uno’s data pool was extremely low, so the numbers here are suspect.

– The fact that the average number of days between source event (i.e., dream or linguistics) and real-life news hit was 50 days is incredibly encouraging. It doesn’t prove anything at this point, but it does suggest that an intention CAN indeed move a precognitive dream TOWARD the intended target date(s).

– Because of the tremendous success with a single day intention, we suggest at this point that when making a date-related intention, to attempt to narrow down the window to an actual, single day. Although the dreamer still produces a bell curve with this single-day approach, the bell curve does appear to be tighter and taller, meaning that if the dream date is “off,” it will be off less than if a whole month is chosen. This is largely still a hypothesis at this point, but definitely worthy of consideration for further research.

– In short, date-related intentions do work, but they do not guarantee success. When deciding on your intention window, select a specific date instead of a large window of time. Also, be sure to monitor your inner beliefs about your ability to dream the intended date. Your beliefs could be the biggest determiner of you getting a successful precog dream for that date window or coming up empty.

 

   

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Copyright © 2014 Chris McCleary. Except for quotes, all rights reserved and any reference about this material requires a link back to this page.

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