Research and experiments related to child birth

There are many systems or schools in Astrology. Each system has its own set of rules, though sometimes contradictory. Obviously, not all of them yield correct results when applied. Most of the rules are given without any theorematic treatment. That raises a question, "how does one sort the correct ones from the wrong ones?". Simple answer is to match them against the actual observations. But the method is tedious as we will see next. We started some experiments in the context of child birth esp. the first child birth. This article describes our efforts so far and some interesting outcomes.

To understand the terminology, please use the reference pages available from the sidebar.

Method

With the limited time in our hands, we could use only one system of astrology for the experiments. Given the high level of accuracy and simplicity, we chose Krishnamurti system.  We used Statistical Hypothesis Testing to validate the rules against the observations.

We use following rules from Krishnamurti's readers. We did not use the rules specifying the effects of aspects of other planets with Rahu and Ketu, and aspects of planets in general.

1. in its Dashas, a planet indicates effects related to the house/s it signifies 
2. A planet signifies following houses
1. The house which it occupies
2. The house/s it rules
3. The house/s ruled and occupied by the lord of Nakshatra occupied by the planet.
3. Whether the effects are desired or undesired is decided by the lord of the sub of the planet. The signification of the sub-lord is decided by rule 2.
4. Rahu and Ketu also (apart from the rule 2) signify the houses occupied and ruled by the lord of Rashi where they are placed.

According to Krishnamurti system, dasha of planets signifying the second, fifth and eleventh houses  should run when the first child is born to a person to effect the increase in family, and child-birth to the person and its spouse. Dasha lords should transit (gochar) the nakshatras of planets signifying these houses.

Observation

We studies the horoscopes of 150 parents and their first children. The observations are as follows

1. 85% parents had the dashas of planets signifying fifth house. The probability of running dasha of significator of the fifth house at any random time is 70% according to rules used above. Thus the hypothesis that "when first child is born the dashas of planets signifying fifth house are running" holds for the data studied with type 1 error less than 1%.
2. We did not see such a high correlation for second and eleventh house, esp. in case of fathers. In case of mothers however second house was observed to be significant next to the fifth house.

In this case, we observed that although the rule specifies the three houses viz. second, fifth and eleventh being significant, only two houses viz second and the fifth were found to be significant in the observed data and that too for mothers. Thus the method allows validation of existing rules and at the same time shows the need for improving those rules.

Hence we are continuing the study to validate existing rules and hypothesizing new rules as needed. According to the rules of hypothesis testing, in the given context, we need samples in the range of thousand to conclusively discard or accept a hypothesis. It is possible to analyse large data within minutes using computers, so today it's possible to experiment using such methods (something which wasn't possible when Krishnamurti formulated his method). We are collecting the birth details of parents and their first children to continue our studies.

If you are interested in providing your details, please use Google Form  here.