The zodiac signs of every Oscar winner

Aries leading the count is real: it is the most common Sun sign among the 370 winners whose sign can be pinned down. It is also the kind of lead that turns up by luck. Its own test gives p = 0.036, which looks small until you remember there are twelve signs; the chance that at least one of twelve reaches that by luck alone is about 36%. The test that looks at all twelve signs at once gives p = 0.591 against the US birth calendar and p = 0.767 against a flat one-in-twelve split. Neither comes near the usual 0.05 line.

The five categories are smaller samples, between 74 and 80 people each, so their bars swing more. None of them passes the test either: the lowest p-value of the five is 0.243 (Best Supporting Actor). Read the per-category table as a record of who won, not as a ranking of which signs act or direct better.

Signs do not get an equal share of birthdays. The Sun spends a day or two longer in the summer signs than in the winter ones, and in the United States more babies are born in late summer than in winter. So the fair comparison for each sign is not one in twelve but the share of births it would get anyway. We built that from CDC/NCHS registered births by month for 1994 to 2003 (39,722,137 births), spread over each month's days and run through the ephemeris for every winner's own birth year. Most winners were not born in the United States, and most were born long before 1994, so this baseline is an approximation; that is why the plain one-in-twelve test sits beside it. They agree.

24 winners were born on a day when the Sun changed sign at their birthplace. Without a birth time their Sun sign cannot be known, so they are listed as cusp, undetermined instead of being guessed. Putting all of them in the earlier sign, or all in the later one, does not change the verdict (p = 0.504 and 0.531).

It says nothing about Moon signs, rising signs or whole charts, which need birth times. And no count can tell you what your own chart means for your work. What it does show is how lists of the luckiest or most talented signs are usually built: from small samples that were never compared with chance. Byline Shymea Editorial.