Zener Card Diary March 21, 2020
I wanted to wait a little while before I published this next diary entry. I needed to think a bit about the data I had collected. I am posting results from March 19, 2020 today on the 21st. The diary will be published when it feels right, and not daily.
I am beginning to understand what these tests are showing. Much of the Wikipedia article about Zener card testing is looking for high scores in the Zener cards. What is being investigated is how many guesses the test subject can get right to confirm the presence of ESP. What if this is the wrong way to look at it? We may not be able to confirm the existence of ESP with this test at all. But, we may be able to find out something else from this test instead.
So far, my highest hit percentage was 40% (done in other tests not in the diary). To break out of the expected chance outcome one would need to score 15 hits from the 25 cards. That would give the test subject a 60% hit percentage. I am nowhere near that hit percentage, and I doubt I can get that high. The chances of getting a 60% hit percentage is around 1 and 90,000 according the Wikipedia article.
What if this test isn’t about getting hit percentages. Maybe this test is about what the results do when you really put all of your intentions into it.
Another Look at the Data
What I can see from my tests is that each session has given me different results. There has yet to be a series of tests that duplicated prior results. The session I preformed on March 19, 2020 was to see if I could reproduce the pattern I saw from the March 18th session data. I was not able to reproduce the results. I even attempted to replicate my divided attention by having a movie on in the background.
This is the data graph from the 19th (the most recent data).
What seemed to happen with my results is that it spiked on the first and fifth tests, and the last group of four revealed a bell curve. This was the direct opposite of what was predicted.
This is the data graph from the 18th data session.
I had set my intention on seeing a spike every fourth tests within the 12 test session. It seems the cards gave me something else.
New Conclusion
The tests results from both sessions reveal what would be expected by chance. No test session was the same. Maybe the new focus is to find a similar sessions.
If this is all by chance then each session should be different. What I could look for now is how each session compares to each other.
New Perceptions
This changes the focus of the Zener card test. I am not looking for high spikes for hit percentages anymore. Instead I can look for sessions that resemble each other.
Perhaps we all have ESP, but it may resemble a low consistent static rumble. A good analogy would be the microwave background radiation in the known universe. The background radiation is consistent throughout the known universe, but it varies in certain regions.
Maybe ESP is like this. It’s a warm glow in the background apart of our consciousness. Everyone has it, but it varies from person to person, and situation to situation.
New Goals
If we accept that ESP is inherent in everyone then does someone have a psychic signature? I wonder if someone else could duplicate my data signature (that is if I can even find a data signature).
The next step will be getting data from other people and be more rigorous with my own data collection.
I am not sure if I can get anyone to do this test in the near future. So, I will continue to test my self in various ways. With new data I can compare the sets of data to other data sets.
The focus right now will be to see if sessions resemble one another. Looking for high hit percentages will be apart of the pasterns. I expect the hit percentages to be within the scope of chance, nothing out of the ordinary. What I want to see is signatures in the data paterns.
See the next entry:
Zener Card Diary Entry 5
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