Gauquelin Sectors

History

Michel Gauquelin published in 1955 that French sports champions were born more often than chance allowed with Mars just past its rising or its culmination; he later called the Moon “favorable” for writers. The Comité Para (1976) found the champions’ excess in 535 but disputed his expectation; the U.S. test (1979–80) found 13.5% in 408; the CFEPP (1996) 18.5% in 1,120, about 18% in scrambles. Ertel (1988) found the share rising with fame; Kurtz, Nienhuys and Sandhu (1997) traced it to selections made knowing the sectors. Müller (1991) gathered 402 Italian writers, half of them new.

How it works

A planet’s hour angle and semi-arc give its place on the diurnal circle: rising to culmination is sectors 1–9, culmination to setting 10–18, the night 19–36, each semi-arc divided evenly in time. The Moon, whose motion makes her semi-arcs unequal, is placed by the time from rising to setting in eighteen parts, and from setting to rising. A body is placed by its true position or its point on the ecliptic. The births are opengauquelin.org’s, nameless; the controls move each hour one to nine places along the list (the Comité Para’s), exchange the hours at random, or couple a date, an hour and a place at random (the CFEPP’s).

How it was checked

The tests put Venus to Saturn within 2″ of the Swiss Ephemeris at 106 births and every sector within 0.02 of swe_gauquelin_sector, the Moon within 12″ and her sector within 0.002 of the same rule on its Moon; reproduce Gauquelin’s Mars at Lisieux in 1897 to the minute; and recount 55 of the U.S. 408 and 207 of the CFEPP’s 1,120, as published. Against the Gauquelins’ printed sectors of 1984 the true place agrees for about 95% of 1,770 births in E1 and 91–94% of 1,267 in E3, the Moon included (by her hour angle, only 90%); the ecliptic point for 89% of the 2,088 (1970).

Limits

The Moon is seen from the Earth’s centre, as the printed sectors show. Gauquelin’s own expectation is not recomputed; the shuffled controls stand in for it. The Zelen test’s ordinary births are not in the open data; Müller’s own count was not seen. Times are as given: U.S. clocks as standard time, the CFEPP’s places from Nienhuys’s file, Müller’s own clock times, 376 of Gauquelin’s writers with only a UT (their clocks read as local mean time); births whose clock and UT disagree by hours are left out.