It's getting hot in here!

[DA Baracus]

Are there genuinely folk in here who think they've 'got one over' on the Met Office and scientists/science in general?!

It's surely just an act or wind up. Surely!

[Billy Jean King]

Looks like the talk of 40 and 42 degrees has been quietly dropped. 
And yesterday’s record for Wales is STILL being VAR checked. 
 
[emoji38]

VAR checked ?

It smashed the previous record by almost 2c which is virtually unheard of as was discussed yesterday. It will be ratified it's more a case of how far over the line was it as opposed to was it over the line if you want a football analogy.

[Thorongil]

10 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Yes they are. The big bookies employ statisticians and data scientists to produce models for their odds to maximise their profit. It's not the 1970s any more where it's just a guy working it out in his head and writing it on a board.

Data Scientist is a completely made up job title and does not qualify as science. They are indeed statisticians. 

But if we are now ascribing statistical modelling i.e Ladbrokes as “science” then what are they doing - predicting or forecasting? They are synonymous according to the actual language but I was told here yesterday there is a distinction between the two. That being that scientific forecasts are to be given MORE leeway that someone predicting the football scores.

Are the hedge fund managers scientists as well?

Edited July 19, 2022 by Thorongil

[Thorongil]

4 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

VAR checked ?

It smashed the previous record by almost 2c which is virtually unheard of as was discussed yesterday. It will be ratified it's more a case of how far over the line was it as opposed to was it over the line if you want a football analogy.

They keep saying “provisionally”. Normally when a record is actually broken we find out that day. 

[dorlomin]

32C recorded at several locations at 9am. It's all but guaranteed today will be one of the hottest days ever recorded in the UK. Personally I would be surprised if we do not break the 38.7C all time record set 3 years ago. While there is some moaning about the tone of the news reports, today is a day when people who are vulnerable and in poorly ventilated rooms, houses etc are at real risk of hospitalisation and death. Heat waves are the deadliest extreme weather events we get in modern Britain. 

 

 

 

[Hedgecutter]

Imagine fighting against climate change, telling us it'll kill countless folk, yet desperately hoping that the temperature tops 40 for self-serving "told you so" purposes.

[coprolite]

6 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

Data Scientist is a completely made up job title and does not qualify as science. They are indeed statisticians. 

But if we are now ascribing statistical modelling i.e Ladbrokes as “science” then what are they doing - predicting or forecasting? They are synonymous according to the actual language but I was told here yesterday there is a distinction between the two. That being that scientific forecasts are to be given MORE leeway that someone predicting the football scores.

Are the hedge fund managers scientists as well?

I'll take that predicting v forecasting thing as it was only me that said it. 

My understanding was that a prediction was a statement about what would happen but a forecast was about the probabilities of what might happen. 

It appears that no-one else has ever heard of that distinction so i'll concede that i got that wrong. 

They're not exactly the same though. Forecast is a subset of prediction. 

[craigkillie]

12 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

Data Scientist is a completely made up job title and does not qualify as science. They are indeed statisticians. 

But if we are now ascribing statistical modelling i.e Ladbrokes as “science” then what are they doing - predicting or forecasting? They are synonymous according to the actual language but I was told here yesterday there is a distinction between the two. That being that scientific forecasts are to be given MORE leeway that someone predicting the football scores.

Are the hedge fund managers scientists as well?

Data scientists are statisticians, yes, and statistics is very obviously a branch of science. Therefore people working in those roles are scientists. A weather forecast and a football odds forecast are both predictions made from a statistical model. They take all the available data and then produce some form of output which indicates the most likely outcomes, and usually also an associated level of uncertainty.

The only practical difference between the two is how sophisticated the models are - I'd expect that the Met Office have better modelling, and they also have more data to use, but at the same time they are modelling a far more complex system.

Edited July 19, 2022 by craigkillie

[dorlomin]

10 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

They keep saying “provisionally”. Normally when a record is actually broken we find out that day. 

https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-weather-britain-idUSS8N1W802O

Its announced provisionally on the day. They do some further checks before entering the record books. 

[Monkey Tennis]

Despite what my phone is telling me about brilliant sunshine and heat right now, it's very overcast and a bit showery.

[BFTD]

23 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

Are there genuinely folk in here who think they've 'got one over' on the Met Office and scientists/science in general?!

It's surely just an act or wind up. Surely!

No, they're real. Dunning-Kruger in full effect.

A few folk got themselves a lot of attention on here during COVID by articulating most people's frustration, and are really, really missing it now. Apparently they're going to disappear down the big-brain Objectivist rabbit hole on any and all subjects to try and get it back.

[Thorongil]

37 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I'll take that predicting v forecasting thing as it was only me that said it. 

My understanding was that a prediction was a statement about what would happen but a forecast was about the probabilities of what might happen. 

It appears that no-one else has ever heard of that distinction so i'll concede that i got that wrong. 

They're not exactly the same though. Forecast is a subset of prediction. 

Forecast is a subset of a prediction? What do you mean?

[Thorongil]

36 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Data scientists are statisticians, yes, and statistics is very obviously a branch of science. Therefore people working in those roles are scientists. A weather forecast and a football odds forecast are both predictions made from a statistical model. They take all the available data and then produce some form of output which indicates the most likely outcomes, and usually also an associated level of uncertainty.

The only practical difference between the two is how sophisticated the models are - I'd expect that the Met Office have better modelling, and they also have more data to use, but at the same time they are modelling a far more complex system.

Statistics is science? How’s that?

[hk blues]

3 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

Statistics is science? How’s that?

First Hit on Google -

Statistics is the science concerned with developing and studying methods for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting empirical data.

[vikingTON]

3 hours ago, coprolite said:

Climate models can account for the variation in the medieval warm period and the little ice age through solar variation and volcanic activity. 

No, climate scientists can punch in their best estimates of global solar variation and volcanic activity from the time, run their models (which require very loose estimates of the impact of these variables on circulation patterns), and can produce the MWP and little Ice Age conditions from that exercise. That doesn't mean that they've actually determined the causal relationship between them to any meaningful degree of certainty. 

A global climate model is an excellent broad brush guide for global conditions (the planet is warming and will continue to warm). They are not good for explaining regional events like the MWP from 1000 years ago, nor predicting regional changes to climate such as drier/wetter summers in this part of Europe. That doesn't stop some impact-seeking scientists from claiming that they can find the answers to those questions through the sacred model, but their claims should be taken with a shovel of salt. 

Edited July 19, 2022 by vikingTON

[jimbaxters]

53 minutes ago, dorlomin said:

32C recorded at several locations at 9am. It's all but guaranteed today will be one of the hottest days ever recorded in the UK. Personally I would be surprised if we do not break the 38.7C all time record set 3 years ago. While there is some moaning about the tone of the news reports, today is a day when people who are vulnerable and in poorly ventilated rooms, houses etc are at real risk of hospitalisation and death. Heat waves are the deadliest extreme weather events we get in modern Britain. 

 

 

 

It's one day (or two if you include yesterday). Mainland Europe has suffered these temperatures for two weeks at least now with no sign of a let up. If people are so stupid that they can't take measures to stay cool for one day then the U.K needs dumped in the sea.

Edited July 19, 2022 by jimbaxters

[Thorongil]

3 minutes ago, hk blues said:

First Hit on Google -

Statistics is the science concerned with developing and studying methods for collecting, analyzing, interpreting and presenting empirical data.

First hit on google.

Most people who call themselves data scientists are rarely involved in science at all. Instead, their work primarily involves mathematics, and usually the branch of mathematics called statistics.

 

 

[Thorongil]

With a bit more investigation, it seems the science bit that some claim seems to be “computer science”. So the IT side of their job. 

Is IT really science when you are running numbers to predict football scores? I’d have to say no. 

surprising to see people being so quick to ascribe things as being scientific. I would have though that’s a term people would want to protect.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Thorongil

[Stellaboz]

We've had temperatures like that over here for at least the past 5 years. It hit 40 in Dusseldorf couple of years back, utterly horrendous. 

[hk blues]

1 minute ago, Thorongil said:

First hit on google.

Most people who call themselves data scientists are rarely involved in science at all. Instead, their work primarily involves mathematics, and usually the branch of mathematics called statistics.

 

 

That wasn't the question though.