Guest guest Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 Namaste, > This is incredibly true! It came true for me, my wife,> my siste-in-law and many more charts. One can predict > childbirth accurately by looking at transit of Jupiter,> Mars and Saturn. I have a comment regarding "one can predict childbirth accurately". The principle given by you below is exceedingly good for explaining known past but rather unsatisfactory for predicting future. Let me elaborate using an example. Take an example chart: Lagna, Venus and Ketu in Le; Jupiter in Li; Rahu in Aq; Saturn and Moon in Ar; Sun, Mars and Mercury in Cn. The 5th house is in Sg; the 9th house is in Ar; the 5th lord is in Li; and, the 9th lord is in Cn. So mark the four signs (Ar, Cn, Li and Sg). You will see that Saturn touches or aspects one of these signs when transiting in any sign except Vi and Sc. So Saturn's transit in any of the other ten signs can give childbirth based on this principle. Which of the ten signs will you pick when predicting childbirth? Explaining known past is easy, as Saturn's transit in 10 out of 12 signs is covered. But making predictions is very difficult (after all, how to pick one sign out of the ten contender?). Similarly, Jupiter touches or aspects one of the four signs when transiting in any sign except Ta and Vi. So Jupiter's transit in any of the other ten signs can give childbirth based on this principle. Which of the ten signs will you pick when predicting childbirth? Similar logic applies to Mars. Bottomline is this: Try to mathematically compute the probabilities. On any given day, the probability that Saturn will have aspected one of these 4 points in the previous 9 months is around 0.8 (i.e. 80%!!). With such a high probability, this condition is almost always satisfied. Take any day you wish (not just the day when childbirth really occurred) and apply this principle. It will be satisfied in 80% cases on average. Thus, you may take 100 charts and verify this to be true in 75-85 charts, but still you cannot make confident predictions using it. If K.N. Rao or others made successful predictions using this, either there is more to the principle that is not revealed to the public or they are just lucky. Mathematical facts are very clear here. At the end of this email, I am giving an excerpt from the chapter on rational thinking from my book ("Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach"). I hope some astrologers who understand mathematics and appreciate rational thinking will enjoy reading it. May Jupiter's light shine on us, Narasimha > According to K N Rao:> > Saturn should have aspected 5th house or 5th lord or 9th house or> 9th lord within 9 months of the child birth either through direct> motion or retrograde (in the case of retrograde it will give > effect from the previous house).> > AND> > Jupiter should have aspected the same way as above> > AND> > Mars should have aspected the same way but within 75 days> > -- TKT -------------------------- Extracted from "Vedic Astrology: An Integrated Approach" © P.V.R. Narasimha Rao 33 Rational Thinking 33.3 Known Past vs Future Some authors present some principles in their books and present many examples that show the efficacy of the principles. However, one finds many times that these principles are too vague to be useful in practice. They are good enough to explain known past, but not good enough to predict future. An extreme example will make this clearer. Suppose someone presents us with a principle: "Someone born with lagna in an airy sign gets married when Venus transits in an own sign or a friendly sign or a watery sign or a trine from natal 7th house". It may make sense to us, because Venus is the significator of marriage and being in an own sign or a friendly sign or a watery sign makes this watery planet strong. Also, Venus transiting in a trine from natal 7th house may seem favorable for marriage to occur. We may test this principle against as many examples as we want and we will find it to be satisfied in 100% cases. Does that mean that this is an excellent principle? No! This is not a meaningful or useful principle at all. Why? The list given covers the entire zodiac. Ta and Li are own signs of Venus. Ge, Vi, Cp and Aq are friendly signs. Cn, Sc and Pi are watery signs. Ar, Le and Sg are trines from the 7th house for any person with lagna in an airy sign. If you count the signs, you will find that all the twelve signs are covered! So the principle indirectly means, "someone born in an airy sign gets married when Venus transits in one of the 12 signs". Of course, Venus transits one of the 12 signs always and this is a trivially correct statement. So it will be satisfied in the case of all people with lagna in an airy sign. But, can we use it to make any predictions? If we get the chart of someone with lagna in an airy sign, can we predict using this principle when he will get married? No! This is the problem with vague astrological principles. True, this is an extreme example, but didn’t "Venus in own or friendly or watery sign or a trine from the 7th house" make some sense to us? However, it turned out to be too general (or vague) to help us in making a precise prediction. Constructors like the above are commonly found in astrological literature. We talk about the 7th lord giving marriage or a planet aspecting or conjoining 7th or 7th lord. Or a planet having an argala on 7th or 7th lord. If it is still not enough, we can add the nakshatra lord of 7th lord or his dispositor or someone else. As we add conditions, we finally cover all the planets. We can always explain the known past this way. Of course, if we have a standard procedure for finding the strongest candidate among all those planets and if his dasa always gives the results, then it is logical. But, if there are 6 candidates and we explain an event by simply showing the candidacy of the planet involved, it is irrational. We are in trouble when making predictions about future in that approach – which of the umpteen candidates will give the result? The root cause of the problem is that we often use the wrong tool to analyze a matter. Sages explained hundreds of dasa systems and yet we use only a handful. When we use the correct technique, probably the strongest candidate gives the result. When we use a wrong technique, we are forced to give a vague justification. For example, we saw in Example 58 that Mercury (8th lord in 7th) and Rahu (malefic in 2nd) were the strongest killer planets. By taking a variation of Vimsottari dasa that starts from the 8th star from Moon’s star, we found that the native passed away in Rahu’s antardasa in Mercury’s dasa. However, one relying on standard Vimsottari dasa always will find that Venus dasa is running and he will explain the event based on the situation of Venus in the 7th house. But, if we take yogakaraka Venus to be a maraka because he is in the 7th house, we can take 6 planets (occupants and lords of 2nd and 7th) as marakas. With 6 planets out of 9 qualifying as marakas, how can we predict when the native passes away? On the other hand, by using the most appropriate dasa, we see that the event was given by the strongest candidates. Because of the corruption in astrological knowledge, many contemporary astrologers don’t use the most appropriate techniques always. Due to this, they have to deal with a lot of vagueness and they rely on spiritual strength for correct predictions. When explaining the past, a vague principle is fine. But predicting the future becomes difficult. One needs luck or spiritual strength. 33.4 Probability Analysis The point made above can be expressed mathematically. Let us say that event A denotes the occurrence (satisfying) of an astrological combination. Let us say that event B denotes the occurrence of an event. Let us say that we want to correlate and link A with B. For example, event A can be "Venus transits in a trine from the 7th house" and event B can be "the native gets married". Now the conditional probability P(A|B) denotes the probability (or chance) that A occurs, given that B occurred, i.e. the chance that the combination is satisfied given that one gets married. And P(B|A) denotes the probability (or chance) that B occurs, given that A occurred, i.e. the chance that one gets married given the combination is satisfied. The two are different. When making predictions in real life, we are concerned with P(B|A). However, when explaining a known event in a book, we are concerned with P(A|B). If A is a large composite of many small conditions joined by "or" (e.g. Venus trnasits in a trine from the 7th house or Jupiter aspects UL in transit or dasa of UL lord runs or dasa of 7th lord runs), we maximize P(A|B). In other words, A is satisfied in most charts when B (marriage) occurs. So we think that A is an excellent principle with a good correlation with event B. However, making A very large makes P(B|A) very low and we can’t predict B just because A occurred. So we should stop unduly worrying about P(A|B) and we should worry more about P(B|A). High P(A|B) helps us in giving nice examples in books. It doesn’t help us in predictions. We should not make our principles vague combinations of many components (e.g. if combinations x or y or z or w or v or u is satisfied, then event B occurs). We should always identify the strongest candidate to give an event. If an event is given by one of the six or seven weak candidates, we should reject the logic and search for an alternative technique in which the event is given by the best candidate. Only with an uncompromising rational approach and dedicated research into the teachings of great Sages can we ever appreciate the subject of astrology in its fullest glory. 33.5 Statistical Research When we come across an astrological principle, we can evaluate its worth using statistical research. We can take as many examples as we can and find out in what percentage of examples the principle is satisfied. Sometimes the result attributed to an astrological combination may be vague and subjective. But sometimes, we have clearly defined events as results and we can use statistical research in such cases. Example 136: Suppose we want to evaluate the principle: "one gets married when the dasa and the antardasa as per Navamsa Narayana dasa belong to one of the four – lagna, upapada, 3rd from upapada and 8th from upapada". It is clearly defined. We can take 200 charts of married people and find the dasa and the antardasa running at the time of marriage. We can find the number of charts in which both dasa and antardasa belong to the 4 signs mentioned. Suppose the number of such charts is 90. So the success rate of the principle is 90x100/200 = 45%. This means that the predictions made just using this principle will not have 100% success. However, the question is — is 45% good enough for this principle or not? Assuming that there is really no correlation between getting married and this combination, we can find the expected success rate. If the real success rate is considerably higher, it means that there is a correlation. It will become clearer after we make some calculations. Suppose there is no correlation between the above combination and getting married. Then let us find the probability of the dasa and the antardasa being one of the four signs on a random date. We have 4 signs. To maximize this probability (i.e. go to the worst case), let us say that lagna is not in the same sign as UL or the 3rd/8th from UL. So we have 4 signs out of 12. The probability that the dasa on any day belongs to these 4 signs is 4/12=1/3. Similarly, the probability that the antardasa on any day belongs to these 4 signs is 4/12=1/3. These two events are independent and the probability that the dasa and the antardasa on any day belong to these 4 signs is (1/3)x(1/3) = 1/9. Expressed as a percentage, this is 11%. What this means is — if we find the dasa and the antardasa on any day, both belong to lagna or the 1st, 3rd or 8th from UL in only 11% cases on average. However, if the dasa and the antardasa on the day of marriage belong to these 4 signs in 45% cases, it is 4 times the exepected success rate. That clearly shows that there is a link between the combination and marriage. This shows a statistically significant correlation. Analysis as above does not directly help us in making predictions, but it helps us in validating atleast a part of astrology as a probabilistic science. Astrology researchers who have the resources and skills should intelligently formulate well-defined principles, test them statistically and find the success rate and compare it with the expected success rate as above. Instead of lamenting the rejection of astrology by the scientific community, we should engage in this exercise and convince ourselves first. This author is confident that exercises like this will establish parts of Vedic astrology as a science in the coming decades. Such statistical studies were conducted by some scientists and western astrologers in the past, but those people did not use the right factors. They did not have a proper grounding in serious Vedic astrology. Divisions, houses, arudhas, argalas, multiple dasas etc will enable us to conduct more meaningful and fruitive statistical research. Fuzzy logic theory will also be helpful. Exercise 52: Suppose we evaluate the principle: "Chara dasa of a rasi occupied or aspected by the 3rd house or a rasi occupied or aspected by the 3rd lord or a rasi occupied or aspected by BK results in the birth of a brother". Suppose it is correct in 75% charts we examine. Evaluate the worth of this principle. [Hint: If events A, B and C are independent, P(A or B or C) = P(A) + P(B) + P© – P(A).P(B) – P(B).P© – P©.P(A) + P(A).P(B).P©] 33.8 Answers to Eexrcises Exercise 52: Let event A be: "dasa rasi is occupied or aspected by 3rd house". Let event B be: "dasa rasi is occupied or aspected by 3rd lord". Let event C be: "dasa rasi is occupied or aspected by BK". A rasi is aspected by 3 rasis (by rasi aspect). So P(A), P(B) and P© are all equal to 4/12=1/3 here. So the combined probability is (1/3)+(1/3)+(1/3)–(1/9)–(1/9)–(1/9)+(1/27) = 19/27 or 70%. Though 75% is higher than 70%, it is not considerably higher. So there isn’t any statistically significant correlation. [basically, combinations that are satisfied in 70% cases on average are poor candidates for our studies. Even if the combination is satisfied in 90% of the cases when the event occurred, we cannot correlate the combination with the event with confidence. On the other hand, if a combination is satisfied only in 5% cases on average, we can suggest a good correlation even if the combination is satisfied in 25% cases when the event occurred. Because 25 is 5 times 5, there is a strong correlation between the combination and the event in that case.] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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