The first thing I ask Banu Guler, the founder of the astrology app Co–Star, is whether she can read my chart. We swap phones to look at each other's profile. After we put our devices aside, she scrawls my astrological chart from memory into her notebook, a circle bisected by various lines like an erratically cut pie. There's a 90-degree square between my sun and my Mars, which is, she lowers her voice and chuckles, "rough." Apparently, it's the shape that represents "sad and temporary."

I am involved with a group called the Astrological Investigators or The Gators for short (www.astroinvestigators.com). The Gators are led by a fellow engineer and astrologer Alphee Lavoie. Alphee brings his engineering analytics skills to a field that sometimes can be considered a bit flakey from the scientific community point of view. That is why Alphee has developed research software employing statistical analysis. The astrological chart is an assessment of a person's potential in various facets of life including health.