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The G20 meeting in London brought leaders from nations with
the largest economies together with an agenda of devising
ways to deal with the ongoing financial crisis. There was
also the secondary but important purpose of the leaders learning
to know each other. This was the first big meeting with a
large group of major figures from around the world for
President Barack Obama. He was effective and well received
and his post-meeting News Conference was an opportunity for
the international press to ask questions. It was a tour de
force, with Obama fielding questions with grace, and I
decided it could be another event in the series we have
identified with Obama gathering crowds through a charismatic
presence.
The GCP event was set for a three hour period beginning 45
mins before the news conference which began at 1:45 Eastern
time, 17:00 to 20:00 UTC. The Result is Chisquare 10930.19
on 10800 df, with p = 0.188 and corresponding Z = 0.887.
It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny
statistical
effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from
noise. This means that every "success" might be largely
driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real
signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect
can
be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of
similar analyses.
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