From: kymhorsell@gmail.com   
      
   I note the NUFORC has put up another tranche of  UFO sightings in the past   
   week, up to around mid-May 2023.   
      
   There was some discussion on their BB about whether or not sightings   
   had suddenly decreased. Someone said the numbers seemed to show they   
   had, but someone else pointed out they can take some time to come in.   
      
   I had looked at this just recently. Beside the date a sightings is   
   said to have happened, the NUFORC keep track of when the report was   
   made.  So you can rummage through the data and see how often reports   
   were made within 1 wk of the sighting, 2 wks, 3 wks, etc.   
      
   It turns out for data after 2006 when web reporting went online that   
   people wait an average of around 1m before they either find the web   
   report form or work up the nerve to say something after ignoring the   
   titters from their friends for weeks.  But the stddev -- the +- that   
   captures about 70% of cases -- is around 10 months. So some people   
   wait a lot longer than average before they report anything.   
      
   But the pattern is also clear. Between 2006 and ~2019 everyone seemed   
   to behave about the same. If someone saw something they were equally   
   likely to report it an any subsequent week. The average just worked   
   out to be around 4 wks. But AFTER 2019 people started to clam   
   up. Despite there being ample time between then and now to make a report,    
   it seems fewer people than usual have come forward. And given the big   
   pandemic spike in reports, you have to wonder why people are so   
   reticent.  On the plus side, it seems in the past couple of years the   
   pattern may have again shifted and people have flipped to becoming   
   more ready to report odd things they see in the sky. But the data on   
   this last part falls in the "statistically weak" basket. We need more   
   data. ;)   
      
   Which brings me to the ACTUAL point of this post. Toward the end of me   
   reading all this on the NUFORC web-site, I spotted someone complaining   
   their sighting had been marked up as "starlink". The NUFORC accept all   
   reports, leave them pretty much as the witness presented them, but   
   sometimes add an annotation in "(((...)))" as part of at least the   
   short comment that we can see in the short form of sightings reports.   
      
   The person concerned argued they had shone a flashlight at the line of   
   ~20 objects and they disappeared, proving it wasn't a sat train.   
   Obviously -- possible. But it is at least equally likely they were a   
   sat train. Other people on the relevant forum said as much.  (And, of   
   course, I added my 2c worth).   
      
   But this in no way whatever should be regarded as a criticism of the   
   original witness. They saw something they didn't understand and they   
   reported it. [Insert standing ovation here]. The NUFORC accepted the   
   report as stated and added the annotation. [Ditto].   
      
   And here I will point out such reports are incredibly important to   
   receive and add to the database because they give a baseline reading   
   on how witnesses behave.   
      
   One of the problems with this kind of witness data -- and why   
   traditional science typically falls on its face for 70y -- is it's   
   not easy to dis-entangle the behaviour of the objects reported from the   
   behaviour of the witnesses. If the sightings reports have some kind of   
   property -- i.e. one state saw more sightings than another state -- is   
   that because more objects were in the sky over one state compared with   
   the other state? Or it it because there are more people in one state   
   than the other to do the reporting? Or is it that people in one state   
   are more confident to report something than another state where the   
   general idea is things in the sky are nothing and should be ignored.   
      
   This is where the baseline measures like starlink come in. We can look   
   at the sightings reports of such things are compare their patterns   
   against the patterns of other kinds of report. The starlink sightings   
   presumably have the patterns created by witness behaviour and   
   starlink behaviour.  And having now 2 different mixtures we can tease   
   apart all three patterns of behaviour.   
      
   As an example let's review an old pattern prev posted. The frequency   
   of sightings by day of week.   
      
   It's an unusual factoid, but NUFORC sightings seem to occur more   
   frequently as the week progresses. Monday has the lower numbers, Tue   
   has slightly more, Wed, Thu, Fri sees increasing numbers with Sat the   
   most common day to see something in the sky (according to reports) and   
   Sun starting to decline again to return to the next Mon and   
   another low-point in sightings.   
      
   Now. Is this because UFO's behave this way? Or is it because people   
   behave this way? Or -- of course -- some kind of combination.   
      
   Well the baseline data can hint at what is what.   
      
   There are presently an incredibly 1400+ reports of objects the NUFORC   
   suspects are starlink trains. If we break them down by D.O.W. we find:   
      
   Dow(Sun==1) reports marked "(((starlink)))"   
   1           246                                  
   2           206                                 
   3           182                                
   4           167                               
   5           273                              
   6           216                             
   7           197                            
      
   If we compare these with sightings that are NOT starlink and also I   
   filter out reports that are made long after the sighting, that might   
   result in someone mis-remembering what the date of the sighting really   
   was, we find:   
      
   Dow     Non-starlink with report within a few weeks of sighting   
   1       11778   
   2       9980   
   3       10208   
   4       10845   
   5       11044   
   6       11929   
   7       15280   
      
   Which the stats assures us is much different from the starlink pattern.   
      
   Whatever the reason for Mon being a minimum sighting day it does not   
   seem to be because fewer people are looking at the sky.  It is likely   
   to be a property of the UFOs.   
      
   In a prev post we had a look at this with some Machine Learning model   
   that suggested -- based on another baseline kind of sighting that   
   mentioned an interaction between a UFO and a jet or other conventional   
   aircraft -- that UFO's flying across the US may be trying to avoid   
   military patrols that may be slightly less common on Saturday and   
   suddenly much more common and refreshed and alert on Monday.   
      
   So thank-you all those 1400+ people that saw something and reported it   
   no matter whether it might be a starlink train or not.  You did not   
   waste your time. You did not waste our time in reading the reports.   
   We figured something out from it. Another brick in the long long road   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)