STAR MATES Experiment FAQ: JUN 05
"FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS"

This is the time this page has been accessed.

QUESTIONS ? For those who have questions about their STAR MATES Search Report, I will be adding more to this FAQ page soon; so please hold off on emailing me with questions until you have had a chance to check the FAQs first. One obvious question -- about the PH Factor -- is answered here. Please remember that this is a free "Experiment" and I am learning from my mistakes, my observations, and your feedback as I go along. STAGE 2 will have some noticeable improvements and new features, and all who joined STAGE 1 are welcome to remain active Members and be matched to the 200+ new STAGE 2 applicants now on the Waiting List. Thank you for your participation, and your patience!

If you received your STAGE 1 Search Report but have NOT submitted your |CONTACT REQUEST Form| please use the hot-link below when you have decided which Members on your Top 5 List you wish to contact by email. You will need to enter the Name and Member#, so have your Search Report printed out and available for reference (or in a browser window for cutting and pasting) when you complete the Form.

Link-to: | Entry Forms ACCEPTED| INCOMPLETE Entry Forms| CONTACT REQUEST Form

List of Questions answered on this FAQ page

These questions are answered in the same order they are listed here, to help you find them by scrolling down this page. Many have hot-links you can select to go directly to the answer.


Why haven't I received my STAR MATES Search Report?

STAGE 1 Members (the original applicants before MAR 1997), please scroll down to the next paragraph.

STAGE 2 applicants: if you have submitted an ENTRY FORM for STAGE 2 of "The Experiment" you are on the Waiting List and will be waiting a while before anything happens (hopefully by the end of JUN 1997). Once STAGE 2 is underway, you will receive an email letter notifiying you that your application has been received and that a new |CHECK-LIST| page has been created where you may check the status of your application by referring to your Application Number. The STAGE 2 Search Reports will go out after all the email addresses have been checked by noting which notices have been returned undeliverable, and as soon as the 200+ Reports can be processed and emailed. Please read on to get an idea of how things will work once your ENTRY FORM has been processed.

If you have not checked your application status on the |CHECK-LIST| page, you may not know if your Entry Form was incomplete and had not been accepted. If you did not re-submit a new Entry Form with all the answer boxes filled in, you probably were not entered in "The Experiment", and thus no Search Report was done. You can still re-apply by submitting a new Entry Form with EVERY answer box filled in; and you'll get your free Search Report if you do this before the Entry Form is removed from this website. If your Entry Form was accepted, but your email address changed since then, your Search Report would have been returned as undeliverable, and your active membership in The Experiment would have been changed to inactive until you re-submit a new application with a working address.

The FINAL CLOSING DATE for Entries was extended to JAN 31 1997, and then some new applications were taken until the total number of people in the dataBASE was 200, or until I was ready to run the Search Reports, whichever came first. I finished processing the birth data for the first 196 participants, and began doing Search Reports on FEB 20. The early entrants began receiving their new Member # and Search Report by email on FEB 22 1997. I emailed them out in small batches as I managed to complete them. Each report takes over 10 minutes of computer time to complete, and then sending the report by email takes some extra time, so you can see by the math that it took many hours to complete all 200 reports and send them out by email (more than 10/60 x 200 hours).

If your Entry Form number was 61 to 119 please be sure to read this! I regret that some email addresses were lost when a disk file was damaged, so PLEASE check the |CHECK-LIST| page and re-submit an Entry Form with your name and email address and ORIGINAL Entry number, so you may receive your free Search Report which is being processed this week. About 30 Entry Forms were affected, in the range from 61 to 119. All the data except the email address was recorded by hand, so the Search Reports are being prepared, but cannot be emailed until those affected re-submit their email address. My apologies for any inconvience this may cause these 30 Members and any who were matched to them and wish to contact them.

If you entered an email address at "hotmail.com" or any anonymous mail forwarding service, your application was not accepted. You may re-submit a new Entry Form if you can supply a personal email address with your own Internet Service Provider (who knows who you are). The main reason for not allowing hotmail.com addresses is that mail sent to hotmail.com has been returned as undeliverable on several occasions. The other is that while once can appreciate the desire to protect one's privacy, it is not fair to other Members who HAVE been willing to submit their personal email addresses. When you use an anonymous address, it may appear as though you have something to hide. [To those who do not have their own ISP account for Internet access and are using a free internet email service: I understand your situation, and will try to find a reasonable compromise, such as using a hotmail.com address for your contacts with other Members AFTER you have verified your true identity in some way when applying for membership. But for now, since other applicants using @hotmail.com addresses were told they could not enter, it would not be fair to them to change the policy for later applicants until the first stage of The Experiment is finished.]


How can I get the email addresses of the people on my Top 5 List?

When I emailed the Search Reports to the first 200 Members, I found that some addresses were missing, while some Search Reports have been returned with "User Unknown" notices from their mail servers. If your Application Number is listed with a ? or an R on the |CHECK-LIST| page, please re-apply quickly to avoid further delays! I could not process the Contact Requests for email addresses of Members until I had the correct addresses on file, so the Contact Request Form was not to be made available until most of the re-submitted email addresses were received. To avoid any further delays, I started taking Contact Requests on APR 15, whether or not all the current email addresses were received, so please check the |CONTACT| page now to see the new Contact Request Form.

Please understand that you MIGHT receive an address which now is not working, or MIGHT be told an address for a certain person is unavailable. Some participants may not send in their current addresses if they change them, or may later decide to de-activate their free membership in The Experiment. I suggest you request all 5 addresses, just in case. Once the Contact Request Forms have been processed and the addresses sent out, I will be de-activating any Members who have missing or non-working email addresses.

At that time you may be able to order an updated Search Report which matches you only to ACTIVE Members, and according to a set of matching criteria you can set YOURSELF, such as gender and marital status, plus age and height ranges (there may be a fee for this extra service, since I don't think I am up to to doing another 200+ Search Reports for free, and since Members are more likely to keep their address updated and correspond with other Members if they have paid to participate). By the time this is available, I will have added all the late applicants to the ASTRO database, so there will be many more potential matches available than there were for the initial Search Report you already received. As new Members are accepted, they will be added to the database, and all new Searches will match you to all the active Members, plus any new Members who have been accepted up to the time your Search was run.


Some of the people on my Top 5 List are the same sex as me, but I entered an R to indicate I wanted a "Romance" relationship only. What gives?

As mentioned on the Entry Form near the place where you entered the R, for the purposes of "The Experiment" you were going to be matched for compatibility will ALL Members, not just the ones who also wanted a romantic relationship only. You can always choose NOT to contact the people who are the "wrong" sex or have an F in the Status section before their name to indicate they are looking for "Friendship Only". If there is an A there, it means they indicated they are open to Friendship OR Romance, or both. If you did not get ANY people of the "right" sex or any with an A in the Status section, I am sorry that it worked out that way. It might be worth contacting them anyways, for the chances are you might make a good friendship or pen-pal relationship. And some people who indicated F might also be open to Romance if they feel comfortable with you in a Friendship.

The reason I set things up this way was to ensure that the matches you received were the BEST possible ones available in a relatively small database of 100 or 200 people. The STAR MATES program is very good at matching people for compatibility in ROMANTIC relationships, and it WILL be used for that purpose as well, once it is tested through means like this "Experiment". But to get the best matches for romance, there must be many more people to match you with - especially since limiting factors like age range and height are going to eliminate many more potential partners than would be the case with an Internet pen-pal kind of relationship.

Soon you will be able to request a Search Report where YOU set the "LIMITS" or search parameters which are listed on the "LIMITS" line of the Search Report you have already received. If you are a heterosexual male, you can specify that you want to be matched to ONLY heterosexual females who are interested in a romantic relationship, are no more than X years older than you and no more than Y years younger than you, are no more than X inches taller and no more than Y inches shorter than you, and are Never- married, Separated, or Divorced (or any combination of these). You can even limit the matches to a certain Sun Sign or to those who have the Moon or Venus or Mars or the Ascendant in a particular Sign. You can limit the matches to Members who are predicted to have an attraction to you, or you to them, or both. You can even limit the matches to Members who have a specific astrological aspect from one of their Planets to one of yours, such as a Venus/Mars conjunction.

But when you set LIMITS, you will be eliminating more and more people who might have been very compatible with you if only you had not set your limits so narrowly, so you need to be careful you don't eliminate everyone!

Everyone who passes the screening process set by your LIMITS will then be ranked for the hightest average score on whatever combination of Factors you specify too, so you end up with the best matches who also meet your range of specifications. But in a small database of people to be matched to, you are more likely to find that nobody can be matched to you within those limits! There were not that many people who only indicated an R for "Romance only", so if you had been matched only to those of your preferred sex who also wanted a only romantic relationship, you might have had less than 5 on your Top 5 list.


My Search Report shows a high PHysical Factor for someone who is the same sex as me. Does this imply that I could be gay?

Not at all! The PH Factor indicates a "physical attraction" and a possible "sexual compatibility" -- but NOT necessarily in the same sense that is commonly understood. For example, a straight male may meet another straight male at, say, a tennis club, and find that they admire each other's physical prowess or physique or way of expressing their "maleness". They might like each other's style, in the way they "act like a man" or walk a certain way or talk "man talk". They might identify with each other, seeing the other as being the way THEY like to be seen as the type of man they are themselves.

It can be a "mutual admiration" of their heterosexual masculine qualities and not anything "sexual" at all, in the usual sense of the word. They might feel comfortable with each other as "buddies" and want to become friends or playing partners or team-mates. There does not have to be any interest in each other as sexual partners at all, if the people involved are not interested in same-sex partners.

However, the same PH Factor would indicate a sexual interest, as well as all of the above, IF the people were of the opposite sex or IF one was attracted to same-sex partners.

If you notice how romantic partners are sometimes attracted to the best friends of their own partner, you can see this working sometimes. If a man is well-matched physically to his female partner, and she has chosen a best friend in the same way as described above for the two tennis players, then the chances are that her man will also find her female friend attractive on that same physical level. This is only my theory, so feel free to dispute it or disregard it. But when I see the STAR MATES program matching two straight women as number 1 on each other's list (using the PH Factor too), and then it turns out that they are best friends and roommates, I have to consider that there is something to this theory, because the evidence seems to suggest it. This happened. When I tried a match without including the PH Factor, they were not ranked as high in relation to the other matches, ie. they were not rated the number 1 potential match for each other anymore.

I originally eliminated the PH Factor when I was matching men to men or women to women in "platonic" types of relationships; but later I found by experimenting that when the PH Factor was also used in the matching process, it produced better matches than when it was ignored. People who were already good friends were ranked higher WITH the PH Factor being used than when it was not.

So the bottom line about the PH Factor is:
1) it can indicate a POTENTIAL physical ATTRACTION in the purely sexual sense; -OR-
2) it can indicate a POTENTIAL physical ADMIRATION for each other's qualities and style, on a purely platonic level; -OR-
3) it can also indicate a POTENTIAL for both, IF one is inclined to see the other as a potential sexual partner, as in a male/female relationship or a same-sex gay relationship. It just indicates they COULD be compatible, not that they WOULD choose to be sexual partners -- the choice itself would depend on each person's gender orientation, not the PH factor score.

So when you see a high [PH] Factor (or an e or ~ beside one of the Sign letters) listed on your Search Report for someone of the same sex as you, it does NOT mean you are sexually attracted to them if you are not inclined to be attracted sexually to the same sex. If you were, it would. If you're not, it wouldn't. But you'd probably feel more comfortable around them than if you were, say, a sensitive male in the company of a macho male, or a sweet and shy female in the company of an fiery and feisty female.


How do I use the CONTACT REQUEST FORM and how many can I submit?

After ALL the reports were sent out to Members with working email addresses, a new |CONTACT| page was created with a free Contact Request Form you can use to ask for the email address of up to 5 Members listed on your Search Report as your top 5 matches. I have offerred to process ONE free Contact Request for up to five people on your Top 5 list, so please start thinking about which ones you want to obtain email addresses for, and be ready to request them all at the same time.

On APR 15 1997 I began taking contact requests, whether or not all the participants have sent in their current email addresses. I suggest you request ALL 5 addresses, in case one or two may not be working by the time you receive them. Some people change their addresses after entering, or leave the Net after their free trial connection runs out; so unless they send in their address changes, I cannot be certain that the email address I forward to you is still going to be working. I will be de-activating any Members whose addresses are not receiving email, so any future Search Reports will not likely contain any matches to people who cannot be reached by email. Because participation in "The Experiment" was FREE, some people have not bothered to check back or submit address changes; so we have to accept this little fact of life that people are free to do what they choose to do. There is a question on the Contact Request Form to get your input on ways to encourage people to keep their membership data up to date.

The Contect Request Form has several answer boxes where you are asked to provide information which will IDENTIFY you as a legitimate Member, to prove the person submitting the request for the addresses of other Members is actually the Member they say they are. It is very important to carefully enter ALL the personal data requested here, for if it is missing or does not MATCH what you entered on your original Entry Form or latest updated Entry Form, then your Contact Request will be assumed to be bogus and will be ignored. This is to protect against YOUR email address being given out to anyone except the people who were matched to you in The Experiment, as well as to protect the privacy of the Members YOU wish to contact.

The Contact Request Form also includes several survey questions designed to help me design the next stage of The Experiment, make improvements to the Search Reports, decide whether to allow anonymous email addresses to be used, determine reasonable fees for future services to be offerred, etc. I have spent a lot of time and effort to enter you in The Experiment and produce your personal Search Report, so I hope you will be willing to give back a little time and effort in entering your personal answers to all the questions here. I will send you the email addresses you request, as promised, even if you don't answer these survey questions; but I would really appreciate your help so I can develop a well-designed, well-working, useful, and reasonably-priced astrological matching service on the Net.


How do I KNOW if my Entry Form was received and accepted?

If you've already filled in your Entry Form, please select this |CHECK-LIST| hot-link to go to the |CHECK-LIST| page where you can see the STATUS of your Application. If your Entry Form was INCOMPLETE or incorrect, you may need to RE-APPLY quickly!

All those who submitted Entry Forms which were received and ACCEPTED by JAN 31 were considered Members in "The Experiment" and were matched against ALL other Members, not just the first 100. This meant that the 100 Search Reports scheduled for the week of JAN 27 could not be done until after JAN 31, but will now be sent after FEB 19 so they may contain matches to over 195 Members. If you have already been ACCEPTED as a Member, but have since CHANGED your email ADDRESS, please submit a new Entry Form and enter your ORIGINAL Entry number, not the new one displayed on the screen. Then check the |CHECK-LIST| page in a day or two to confirm it was received and acknowledged. Please do not email questions or requests unless absolutely necessary, since I need to devote as much time as possible to getting the Search Reports and Contact Request Forms out to everyone.

Why is the ENTRY FORM still working after the Final Closing Date?

The "official" FINAL CLOSING DATE for Entries was JAN 31 1997. All Entry Forms received and ACCEPTED by that date were entered in "The Experiment" and were matched against ALL other Members, not just the first 100. This meant that the 100 Search Reports scheduled for the week of JAN 27 could not be done until after JAN 31, but were sent sometime after that date so they could contain matches to approximately 200 Members.

The Entry Form was left operational so those who applied before JAN 31 1997 could make corrections or address changes up to the last minute before the Search Reports were run (which turned out to be FEB 20). For those of you who have entered for the first time AFTER JAN 31 there can be NO GUARANTEE that you will be entered in The Experiment; however, your Entry Form will be SAVED and might be entered in case openings come up in the first stage, or might be entered in a possible second stage of The Experiment. (You may still submit an Entry Form now, as long as you understand that I am NOT promising to do anything with it except save it for possible future experiments. You MAY get a free Search Report later, but you may not, okay?)

If you submitted an Entry Form after FEB 20 1997, please do not expect to receive anything until the end of April 1997 or later, since I have much work to do in processing the Contact Requests for the initial 200+ Members before I can work on processing the dozens of late applications. I am saving all the Entry Forms and will process them in the order they came in. Eventually your Application Number will appear on the |CHECK-LIST| page, so check at the end of April 1997 to see if your Application was accepted or needs to be re-submitted.


What were the original TERMS and CONDITIONS I agreed to when I submitted my Entry Form?

Here is a copy of the TERMS you agreed to in making your Application:

Due to the great deal of work involved in processing 100 applications at once, I am afraid I will have to streamline things by insisting that ALL the following TERMS OF ACCEPTANCE be agreed to if you wish to participate for FREE in "The STAR MATES Experiment". If you feel you cannot accept all of them, please accept my apologies and select the hyperlink to return to the HOME page.

  1. NEW TERM: Applications from "hotmail.com" addresses or any other ANONYMOUS mail forwarder will NOT be accepted.

  2. All applicants must be 18 YEARS OF AGE or older.

  3. All applications must be made using the official ENTRY FORM. Applications by email will NOT be accepted (and may not be acknowledged promptly).

  4. All applications must contain A PERSONAL E-MAIL ADDRESS unique to ONE individual, and which is expected to remain effective until at least JAN 31 1997. (Addresses may be tested to ensure the application is valid.)
    (If you are on-line for a "free trial" period from a service like America On-Line, please do not enter unless you plan to continue.)

  5. All ENTRY FORMS must provide answers to EVERY question, or they will be rejected and the applicant's position number will be forfeited.
    (I am sorry, but I just don't have time to follow-up on incomplete Entry Forms.)

  6. Applications found to contain false information will be rejected, and not subject to appeal. I reserve the right to decline or cancel the free membership of anyone deemed to be acting in a manner which is disturbing to other members, disrupting the proceedings of The Experiment, or endangering the right to privacy, peace, or safety of any Member.

  7. Applications will not be accepted after the FINAL closing date to be announced on the STAR SIGNS Astrology Zine home page. Once entries are finally closed, the ENTRY FORM will be replaced by a notice.


I changed my email address since I applied. How do I let you know?

To submit a CHANGE OF ADDRESS, please re-sumit a complete new Entry Form now, and enter your ORIGINAL "Application Number" instead of the visitor number which appears on the screen. Unless you provide the same birth data you entered the first time, I will not know if you are who you say you are, so please enter EVERYTHING again. I am not going to give other Members a different email address for you unless I am reasonably certain their private letters are going to be emailed to the right person; so you will need to submit enough information to verify that you are the same person who was accepted for entry into "the Experiment" and got matched to other Members. This includes your birth TIME. If you did NOT submit a birth TIME with your original Entry Form, but can now enter a reasonably accurate time, then enter that time now. If you forgot your Application Number, enter a "#" plus your MEMBER # if you have received it on your Search Report -- otherwise just enter "000" so I will know you are not a new applicant.

It would be better to arrange to FORWARD your email to your new address, if this is possible. If you are going on vacation, many Internet Service Providers will allow you to set a forwarding address for your email so it is automatically directed to wherever you are staying. But do keep in mind that you will be getting PERSONAL and CONFIDENTIAL letters from the other Members who write to you, and it would not be appropriate for other people to see them. If you can sign up with a new ISP which has a local access from where you are staying, you can have your own private mailbox, and have your home ISP forward your mail there until you get home again.

If you are ready to use the ENTRY FORM, please select this ENTRY FORM hyperlink now.


How do I contact the people on my Top 5 List?

The CONTACT REQUEST FORM was not made available until ALL the Search Reports were sent to nearly 200 Members. I wanted everyone to have their own Top 5 List before they start getting email from other Members who may already have their Search Reports.

On APR 15 the Contact Request Form was activated to avoid further delays, even though I have not yet received new email addresses from some Members who changed them since applying, and from some whose addresses were accidentally lost when a disk file was damaged.

Please note that you will he entitled to only ONE free CONTACT REQUEST which may include up to 5 of your Top 5 matches, so be thinking about who you want to contact and submit all the names at once. Email addresses will only be provided for Members who appear on your Top 5 List, and your email address will only be released to Members who have YOU on their Top 5 List. Keep your Search Report so you can copy the MEMBER # and first name and status of each Member into the appropriate answer box on the Contact Request Form.

If someone is on MY Top 5 List, will I be on THEIRS too?

Maybe yes, maybe no. People at the very top of your List are most likely to have YOU in their Top 5, but not necessarily. There may be other people who are rated as more compatibile to THEM than you are, but you are probably ranked very high with them even if not in the Top 5. You might have been number 6 or 7, and just didn't show up on a list of only the Top 5.

It works the other way too -- YOU may be ranked in THEIR Top 5, but they might not be listed as one of YOUR Top 5 matches. So you MAY receive email from Members who do not appear on YOUR Top 5 List, but your name and Member # must have appeared on THEIR Top 5 List or they would not have known your MEMBER # and received your email address from me. (Do NOT tell anyone your MEMBER # except the Members you wish to correspond with -- it is like a PIN or password to authorize people to contact you.)

Some Members YOU may contact will not have YOU on their Top 5 List, but you and they can be reasonably certain that your compatibillity rating was high enough to be in the top 10 or so, even if it did not appear in the Top 5 on the other person's list. Always mention your MEMBER # when you write to someone, so they know you are a Member of "The STAR MATES Experiment". You won't know for sure if you appeared on their Top 5 List, so you might also want to quote the "scores" on all 7 Factors, or copy the entire line with their MEMBER # and data and scores into your letter, so they can see how well you were matched. Even if they already know because you WERE on their Top 5 List, it will be more convenient for them to have the numbers right there in your letter. They may also want to see the "label" that was printed on YOUR Search Report about them, so you might want to copy that into your letter too. There are 8 different versions of each label, so even if they have seen one from some other Member's report, yours might be one they have not seen. And if you were on their Top 5 List, you can ask to see how the STAR MATES program "labelled" you on their report.

If someone who contacts me is not on my Top 5 list, how will I know they really were matched to me?

Always ask for the person's MEMBER # so you will know that they are a legitimate Member of "The STAR MATES Experiment". (There will also be a listing of MEMBER #s which have been de-activated, which you can also use to check out the person who contacts you.) No one should know YOUR MEMBER # unless you appeared on their List, or you told them, or they told someone. But I will not release your email address to anyone who submits a CONTACT REQUEST FORM unless (1) they give their Member # and name and these match my records, and (2) their email address matches the one they supplied when applying, and (3) they are still active Members. If you are in doubt as to whether you really appeared on someone's Top 5 List, ask them to quote your Month and Day of birth, or your Rising Sign, or even your compatibility "scores" on all 7 Factors. If you appeared on their Top 5 List, they should know this. Do not show YOUR Member # or "scores" to anyone else, for it is your best way to ensure that only other Members will be able to claim that they have been matched to you. Please note that it is possible for any of their "scores" to differ from yours by 1 percentage point (eg. 81 not 80), because of "rounding errors" in the math when matching you to them, compared to matching them to you -- so don't worry if ther numbers happen to differ by only one point higher or lower.

What does the NA or MF before the name mean?

The two letters under the "St" column indicate the "Marital Status" and "Availability Status" of the Member, in that order. The codes are listed on the CODES line in the rankings section, but here's another list with more details:

N = Never-married, now single, a bachelor, a bachelorette, has never been wed. (But may have lived with someone they did not marry.)
S = Separated, now legally separated or just not living with spouse; but still legally married, not divorced. (May include widows or widowers).
D = Divorced, now legally divorced, no longer married under the law.
M = Married, now legally wed, not separated or divorced.

F = Available for Friendship ONLY, not looking for romantic relationship, may be in a committed relationship already.
R = Available for Romance ONLY, not looking for a new friendship unless it can lead to a romantic relationship. (Check marital status too.)
A = Available for Any or both of the above -- Friendship without Romance OR a Romantic relationship.

What does the + or - after their birth date mean?

The + or - sign which MAY appear to the right of the MONTH of birth for any of the people on your Top 5 List is an indicator of an age difference of 5 or more years between your year of birth and theirs. If you see a + sign, that person is OLDER than you, being born in a year which was 5 or more years BEFORE your own birth year. If you see a - sign, that person is YOUNGER than you, being born in a year which was 5 or more years AFTER your birth year. If there is NO sign at all, the person's age is within 5 years of yours, but may be older OR younger. To provide more detail than this would reveal everyone's birth year, which I have promised not to do. If you want to know their age or their full birth data, you can write to them and ask them.

When I am ready to offer customized Search Reports, you will be able to set limits on the age range of the people you are matched to. You could limit the search to persons 0-50 years older and/or 0-50 years younger than you. To keep all Members' birth years confidential, you will NOT be able to specify an age range which could pinpoint anyone's year of birth; such as setting a limit of +00 and -00 to find people born the same year as you.


What does the "AVG." and "AVERAGE" mean?

This appears on the "RANKED by AVG. of:" line after the last person on your List. The "AVG." at the beginning refers to the average value of all the "scores" for the particular Factors listed after it -- in the "standard" Search Report supplied for free in "The Experiment" it is the average of all Factors EXCEPT the DIfficulty Factor. Your best matches are ranked on the basis of only their scores on these specified Factors. The average of these for each person in the database is compared to those for all other persons, and the highest 5 are listed in order of their highest average. If any other combination of Factors were used instead, the order of the people in the List would change.

Later on, YOU can specify WHICH Factors are used to find your Top 5 matches, so that you can "weight" the rankings according to what Factors are most important to you. IF you wanted to find the people who had the highest KArma with you, you could order a Search Report using only the KA Factor. IF you wanted to find people who had the best potential for a first date, you might try specifying a combination of [IN]+[FR]+[RA]+[PH]. If you just wanted to find the people you could communicate with the best (as in an Internet pen-pal relationship), you might try using only the RApport Factor in the ranking.

The SECOND "AVERAGE" in the "RANKED by" line indicates the average score for EACH of the 7 separate Factors, calculated using the scores for ALL the people who passed the LIMITS (in the "standard" report no limits were used, so it's everyone in the database). These 7 numbers give you an idea of what could be considered an "AVERAGE" score for each Factor. These numbers may be different for each person, so it acts as YOUR OWN baseline for comparison to all the scores on YOUR List. If your AVERAGE score for the [IN]intial INterest Factor was, say, 76, then anyone who scored 80 would only be a little above average, even though 80 might sound like a "high" score. The averages have been set to be close to 70 for all Factors except [IN]=75 and [DI}=60. But each person will have an average which depends on how well they match -- on average -- to the particular set of people in the database. Any Factor's average score will be higher or lower than the "average of the averages" which was set in the program to be an approximate baseline. (It could have been set to 50 or 60, but 70 seems to work well as a realistic indicator. When you meet the average new person, would you say the chance of you becoming good friends [FR] is more likely to be 50% or 70% ?)

The actual NUMBER used in the score is not as relevant as the amount the number exceeds the AVERAGE score listed there -- an average of 75 for the [PH] Factor does NOT imply that you would be physically attracted to 75 percent of all the people in the database -- it just says that anyone who scored more than 75 on the [PH] Factor on YOUR list is potentially MORE physically attractive to you than the average person in the database. In general, scores above 90% are quite infrequent, so they should be regarded as quite significant. A 99% does not mean "absolutely certain" -- but it does suggest that person and you scored as high (or higher) in compatibility for that Factor as the pair who scored the highest in all the testing done so far. (If and when some other pair score higher than 99%, the program's parameters may be adjusted so their score is the hightest possible -- until some new pair being matched happens to score higher than that.)

What does the _ underscore line beside a Sign's letters mean?

I did not have room to include an explanation on the already complex Search Report, so here it is: the underscore character indicates that the Planet (yours or theirs) is forming an "easy" aspect to the other person's Ascendant. In strict astrological jargon, it indicates a conjunction, sextile, or trine to the Ascendant of one person from that Planet of the other person, in their natal horoscope charts. (It may also indicate an opposition, but not a square.) I included it for the astrologers, but it's a little too complex to explain in layman's language for the purposes of the STAR MATES Experiment. Also, it is VERY dependent on the TIME of birth of one of the persons, so it might not appear at all if their birth time was inaccurate by a few minutes. Which is another reason I didn't mention it on the Search Reports -- it might have misled you if someone's time was off a bit.


What "aspect Orbs" are used to determine if the code letters like "e", or other characters like ?, will appear beside a Sign name?

In the initial stage of The Experiment, only aspects to the planet or ascendant with an orb of 2 degrees or less will generate one of those code characters. An "aspect" is any of several specific "angles" between two planets (in this case, one in your birth horoscope and one in the other Member's birth horoscope), such as "180 degrees ("an opposition") or 0 degrees ("a conjunction"). The "orb of aspect" or just "orb" is an arbitrary limit to how many degrees from exact that aspect may be, while still being considered an aspect at all. An angle of 2 degrees would thus be considered "a conjunction" if the orb was set at 2 degrees, but an angle of 3 degrees or more would not. The closer an aspect is to exact (an orb of zero), the stronger the influence it indicates; so by setting small orbs of 0 to 3 degrees you only look at the strongest influences. The actual orb allowed is set by the judgment of the astrologer, based on his own experience and insight combined with generally accepted practices and astrological tradition.

For the purpose of giving the people who receive STAR MATES Search Reports some indication of the stronger influences in their potential relationship with other Members, I chose to use an orb of 2 degrees for all the types of aspects used in the matching process. These will be the most noticeable ones, and probably the most important factors in attracting or challenging the two potential partners in a friendship or romance relationship. If I made it 3 degrees, there would be more code characters, which could create a clutterred report page, and an overly complex and possibly confusing guide to the potentials for each match. Your feedback in The Experiment may result in some future adjustments to the orb used.

MORE QUESTIONS and ANSWERS will be added as they come up!


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First published FEB 17 1997. Last Update JUN 05 1997 14:00 EDT.

AUTHOR and ADDRESS
(c)1997 Michael Star,
81 Lakeshore East #51, Mississauga ON, Canada L5G 4S7
Email Michael at...
starman@astrologyzine.com

Internet Web Site: STAR SIGNS Astrology Zine http://home.istar.ca/~starman

Michael has posted frequently on UseNet newsgroup: alt.astrology

This page and its contents are copyrighted (c)1997 by Michael Star.