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Here's what I don't understand

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Friday, 25 September 2015, at 1:08 a.m.

In Response To: Here's what I don't understand (Tom Keith)

Tom Keith wrote:

I don't see the point you are trying to make. If 100 years of weather data indicate that 12 times in the past it was raining at 5 p.m. on September 27, isn't it reasonable to give a 12% probability of rain for this year at 5 p.m. on September 27?

That's not actually what weather forecasts mean when they say that. The predictions are based on meteorological rather than climatological models. But we're going off on a tangent here.

I think that one of Jim Stutz's points is that there is limited value in stating a predicted number to, say, three decimal places when the uncertainty in the prediction is in the region of ±0.5. You could, of course, retort that if our best model predicts 0.726 then it is useful to know that fact even if we know that the model is crappy. However, I tend to agree with Jim on this point. Unless I'm interested in the model for its own sake, why do I want to know such intricate information about the model? Surely what I'm chiefly interested in is reality.

Furthermore I agree with Jim that promulgating such hyper-precise numbers has the psychological effect of making people believe that that the prediction is more accurate than it really is. If we know that people are likely to be misled but we go ahead and say it anyway, then it's a form of intellectual dishonesty.

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