Eric Hocking wrote:

[...]
I have, in spite of your diversion attempts, tried (and I believe
succeeded) in showing that the crop circle proponent's arguments that
FMD (pedestrian) restrictions had no impact on circle building in 2001
in the UK is unsupportable. What can be concluded from that is up to
those that have been lurking.

I thought river flows might give some indication of weather.

http://www.nwl.ac.uk/ih/nrfa/monthly...2/07/rv00.html

gives the flows of a number of UK rivers but unfortunately only from
1999 to 2002. I have tried to estimate the flows from the
logarithmic scales on the diagram for the Itchen river which flows
in Hampshire and might give some indication for the weather
situation in Wiltshire/Hampshire area. If as you say you work with
govt info maybe you know of a better source.


And the crop circles I have taken from
http://www.cropcircleresearch.com/ar...tribution.html


Year 1999 2000 2001 2002

Mar+Ap+May flow 18 24 35 22
Apr+May circs 24 14 9 4

Mar+Ap flow 13 15 25 15
Apr circs 9 3 0 1

FMD Yes(1)/No(0)0 0 1 0

This amount of data is not really sufficient, but it is interesting
what turns up is a -0.49 correlation between Itchen river Mar Apr
May flows and Apr+May crop circles {call it r(flows-circles)}. I am
risking using the Pearson correlation. And the Mar+Apr flows and the
Apr circles correlation is -0.67.

Also there turns up a correlation of river flow to FMD

Jan Feb Mar Apr May
0.94 0.96 0.97 0.97 0.68

May being when it was finished there?
But anyway taking the Mar Apr May flows figures, since weather might
stop hoaxers,

r(flows-fmd) = 0.94.

And is there a correlation between FMD & circles?

Yes, r(fmd-circles) = -0.29, a small negative correlation, rather

less than from above

r(flows-circles) = -0.49.


Then what happens when partial correlation is used to get a feel for
removing affects of the factors?

When the effects of the rivers are nullified then FMD becomes
*positively* related to circles.

r(fmd-circles.flows) = 0.57 instead of -0.29

and for completeness

r(flows-fmd.circles) = 0.96 instead of 0.94, no change, rather
indicating circles not causative,

r(flows-circles.fmd) = -0.66 instead of -0.49, not much
change indicating FMD not really causative.

With that small amount of data, so far, some of that could be by
chance.