<![CDATA[Grist - Comment Feed for New book on hurricanes and global warming]]> Grist Comment Feed en Comment #1 by Delay And Deny http://www.grist.org/article/storm-world-understanding-hurricanes-today/ Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:06:59 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/storm-world-understanding-hurricanes-today/1 Brain Teasers


Here's something for you guys to work on.   This bum says he can predict anything with 95% certainty:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17tier.html

Dr. Gott has used his technique to successfully forecast the longevity of Broadway plays, newspapers, dogs and, most recently, the tenure in office of hundreds of political leaders around the world. He bases predictions on just one bit of data, how long something has lasted already; and on one assumption, that there is nothing special about the particular moment that you're observing this phenomenon. This assumption is called the Copernican Principle, after the astronomer who assumed he wasn't seeing the universe from a special spot in the center.

Suppose you want to forecast the political longevity of the leader of a foreign country, and you know nothing about her country except that she has just finished her 39th week in power. What are the odds that she'll leave office in her 40th week? According to the Copernican Principle, there's nothing special about this week, so there's only a 1-in-40 chance, or 2.5 percent, that she's now in the final week of her tenure.

How could it be applied to global temperature forecasting....

John Bailo
You Read It Here First


]]> Brain Teasers


Here's something for you guys to work on.   This bum says he can predict anything with 95% certainty:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17tier.html

Dr. Gott has used his technique to successfully forecast the longevity of Broadway plays, newspapers, dogs and, most recently, the tenure in office of hundreds of political leaders around the world. He bases predictions on just one bit of data, how long something has lasted already; and on one assumption, that there is nothing special about the particular moment that you're observing this phenomenon. This assumption is called the Copernican Principle, after the astronomer who assumed he wasn't seeing the universe from a special spot in the center.

Suppose you want to forecast the political longevity of the leader of a foreign country, and you know nothing about her country except that she has just finished her 39th week in power. What are the odds that she'll leave office in her 40th week? According to the Copernican Principle, there's nothing special about this week, so there's only a 1-in-40 chance, or 2.5 percent, that she's now in the final week of her tenure.

How could it be applied to global temperature forecasting....

John Bailo
You Read It Here First


]]> Comment #2 by JMG http://www.grist.org/article/storm-world-understanding-hurricanes-today/ Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:03:53 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/storm-world-understanding-hurricanes-today/2 Uh, duh

Any freshman statistics student learns that it's not hard to predict things with 95 or even 99 percent certainty -- you just widen out the confidence interval and you're good to go.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

]]> Uh, duh

Any freshman statistics student learns that it's not hard to predict things with 95 or even 99 percent certainty -- you just widen out the confidence interval and you're good to go.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

]]>