Iraq War Ends

To identify the time when the Iraq war could be said to end, I think many would agree that a suitably symbolic moment is the destruction of the giant statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, Baghdad. From Norm Hirsh, I received the information that "Saddam's statue falls over at 10:48 am, and is pulled off and falls to ground at 10:49 am Eastern time". Norm thought "There should be a blip as soon as it falls because millions are watching! I'll try to mark the time it hits the ground although the anticipation is building."

The formal time period for the event specified one hour, beginning a few (18) minutes prior to the event, at 10:30, and continuing after the event until 11:30. The result shows a Chisquare of 3756.7 on 3600 df, with a probability of 0.034. The following graph shows the data, which begin a steady departure from expectation when the statue was pulled from its pedestal. A more inclusive look at the data for the whole day shows a steady trend, with this moment as a particularly steep subsection.

A set of independent analyses has been done by Bryan Williams. These look at the same time periods, but use blocked data, and provide a valuable perspective.