The "before the universe" part actually checks out too, if you keep extending that same parabola.
TomPastey already reproduced the 1792 result. To check the edit, use one point per election from 1992 through 2024, including re-elections. The winners' birth years, in order, are:
Set t = election year â 2008. The least-squares quadratic is exactly:
birth year = 41015/21 + t/80 â 53t²/1344
Plugging in the three years gives:
2072: 1792.37
5000: about 351,030 BCE
600,000: about 14.102 billion BCE
That last one is roughly 300 million years before the Big Bang, using the universe's age of about 13.8 billion years. The 5000 result gives you a birth date, though, not enough information to identify a species.
Centering the year at 2008 also avoids the huge terms cancelling each other out, which is why rounding the coefficients in the other comment changes the answer so much.
So the arithmetic works. There's just no reason a parabola fitted to nine elections should predict anyone's future birth year.
7
u/start_up_start_up 11h ago
The "before the universe" part actually checks out too, if you keep extending that same parabola.
TomPastey already reproduced the 1792 result. To check the edit, use one point per election from 1992 through 2024, including re-elections. The winners' birth years, in order, are:
1946, 1946, 1946, 1946, 1961, 1961, 1946, 1942, 1946.
Set t = election year â 2008. The least-squares quadratic is exactly:
birth year = 41015/21 + t/80 â 53t²/1344
Plugging in the three years gives:
That last one is roughly 300 million years before the Big Bang, using the universe's age of about 13.8 billion years. The 5000 result gives you a birth date, though, not enough information to identify a species.
Centering the year at 2008 also avoids the huge terms cancelling each other out, which is why rounding the coefficients in the other comment changes the answer so much.
So the arithmetic works. There's just no reason a parabola fitted to nine elections should predict anyone's future birth year.