Zener Card Diary April 10, 2020.
In the last entry, we talked about performing new types of tests with the elemental cards. I had written that I would start guessing from a full deck with the addition of new cards (the sub elemental cards). If you haven’t read the last entry you can here.
Before I do that, I thought it would be appropriate to learn more about statistics. Much of the historic Zener card tests is rooted in statistics, and learning statistic would be helpful.
This entry and others will cover my learning process for statistics that apply to Zener card testing.
Digital Zener
A great digital Zener card test is available on Psychicscience dot org. You can quickly test yourself there if you like. The useful part for me is the explanation of “how to use the test”, and “about the statistical analysis.”
For one, I feel doing a digital test is far different than testing yourself with actual cards. Testing with real cards involves all your senses. This is only my thought, take it for what it’s worth.
Variations on a Zener Test
The Zener card test has a few options for what you are testing for and variations for you are testing it. First, you can test for clairvoyance or telepathy. Telepathy requires two people and has the tester sending psychic information to the test subject who acts as the receiver.
Clairvoyance is what I have been testing for so far. I am guessing what the cards will be without someone acting as a sender.
The test has variations and can have open or closed decks. This describes how the deck operates in the test. For an open deck, you will make a guess then put the card back into the deck and shuffle it. You will continue to make guesses this way.
Performing an open deck test will allow you to maintain the same level of probability of guessing each symbol. This removes the possibility of tracking your guesses at the same time.
The closed deck is what I have been doing so far. This is where I choose the deck size and use all the cards. Each guess made changes the probability of the next guess due to the remaining symbols left to guess from.
The final variation is described as cards seen or unseen. This is where you reveal your answers mid tests, or at the end of the test.
So far, I have been testing for clairvoyance using a closed deck and with cards unseen.
In my previous testing sessions, I attempted to combat guess tracking by using a method that can be described in previous entries here. This still falls in line with testing for clairvoyance from a closed deck with cards unseen.
More Psychic Science
Psychicscience dot org states that you must choose to guess with cards unseen from a closed deck. Choosing to reveal the cards allows for the possibility of counting the cards. This is great because now I can confirm my original suspicion. I wasn’t sure if the subconscious could count the cards, but the possibility is there.
So, from here on out I will doing it from an open deck. This would be where I shuffle the deck, draw a card, make a guess, reveal the card, then shuffle it back into the deck. I would repeat it as many times as I want to test for.
If I decide to do a closed deck test then I will reveal my answers afterward to ensure the testing is appropriate.
Science and Numbers
At this point, I need to keep learning more about statistical calculations to learn if the data I am collecting has any significance. Again, the Psyhciscience dot org article has given me a tip on statistical analysis. I can see now that I need to understand how to calculate the z value with a z-test.
I have to say that I am much better at working with numbers than I was when I was younger. To get into the university I wanted I took Philosophy 101 to get my quantitative credits. Symbols instead of numbers worked best for me. Now it seems that numbers and formulas are unavoidable.
I feel humbled to be put back onto a learning path because of this study. So here we are, back learning numbers. How exciting, stay tuned for more.
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