In Lay men's terms our test was designed as follows:
(1) A very clear criterion has been defined for establishing two distinct groups for comparison purposes. They have a completely opposite life patterns and there is no scope for interpretation or subjective judgements involved.
Experiment 1: Diagnosed with Cancer before reaching the age of 60) Versus Lived for 80 + years and never had cancer in life
Experiment 2: Timely and long married life Versus Never married until the age of 55.
Experiment 3: Mentally retarded Versus Intelligent
and so on.......
(2) Data from both groups were collected and arranged.
(3) Measure the astrological negativity and positivity of every planet, house and house lord. To do this, we selected two sets of astrological rules, one that predicts negative effects, and the other that predicts good effects. For the sake of this discussion, we refer to them as 'negative rules' and 'positive rules' respectively. Example - One of the negative rule is 'conjugation of a given planet to a malefic planet like Saturn or Mars gives "adverse" effect'. For Experiment 2, when this rule applies to Venus, it has the effect of delayed marriage, which is tested in both groups. An example of a positive rule is 'conjugation with Jupiter gives "good" effect relevant to the planet'. In experiment 3, when this positive rule applies to mercury, the intention is to test higher intelligence. Table 1-4 given in "Rules we tested' section lists all negative and positive rules that have been tested.
We then applied these rules to all individual planets, houses and also lords of these houses. On the basis of compliance with negative rules, we measured negativity and on the basis of compliance with positive rules, we measured related positivity. The comparison of astrological negativity and a separate comparison of positivity for all entities in two sets of birth charts were performed using statistical techniques. The rationale behind this test approach is that if astrology is true, negative rules will be complied with higher frequency in a group that has 'negative life pattern (that is Cancer diseased persons in Experiment 1 OR mentally retarded persons in Experiment 3 etc.). Similarly, if astrology is true the positive rules will be complied with more frequency in the group that has birth charts of timely and long married people in Experiment 2 and so on.
In order to emulate how astrology works, we did a lot more things while testing. e.g. each planet was first given a negative and positive multipliers based on it's dignity, used them in calculations of compliance scores, comparison was done of individual rules as well as set of rules and many more things. But all of this is very complex for a layperson to understand, so we're not taking you there. Rest assured that we made every effort to test astrology scientifically and fairly.
As such, if astrology is true, the difference between two groups is expected to be about 50 % at least. We have however checked it for threshold value of 10%, which means that even if the difference between two groups is greater than 10%, we will consider it as evidence of astrology. You will agree that it is a very liberal and easy test for astrology to pass through. At the same time, it is the most stringent test for us to disprove astrology. However, we decided to perform the test in this manner to avoid any ambiguity and to give maximum benefit to astrology.