Watching the 6PM news on BBC1 this evening, we were informed that "...There's a 70% chance that this summer will be warmer than average."
WTF does that mean?? That there's a better than average chance that it will be better than average? Or does it mean that 70% of the summer will be warmer?
I get similarly bemused when the forcast tells me that there is "...a
75% chance of rain". What a load of cr@p - surely its either raining or it isn't - there's no such thing as 75% of a shower...
It is like what I have heard on one of the private channels ... *OH* the myth-buster-crap: "This device measures the speed per second". But they didn't say how it is called.
You surprise me; I thought the BBC used these figures because everyone understood Bayes Theorem and Bayesian Networks. :-) You will be expecting them to tell us what inference factors they are using and how they calculate them. Have a look here and all will become clear (VBG) although not to a simpleton like me!
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When it makes sense to you please can you explain it to me, and I need short (very) syllables. To me it makes as much sense as all that probability crap such as Pascal's bloody triangle and independent and mutually exclusive events.
As far as I can see it is meant to lend credibility to someone who is telling us what will happen tomorrow when we all know, if they knew that, they wouldn't be working for the BBC but would be enjoying the spoils of regular lottery wins.
Sorry Tony, no help whatsoever, just like the weather forecast.
Regards
Keith
PS Please do not think I understand all this, this post has been created by my sense of humour and a couple of glasses of cheap plonk with friends, not by my scientific understanding. As far as I can tell, the meaningless gibberish that Tony talks about is just that.
Oh, dear and you lot have haven't worked out what the 75% of a shower is.
It is quite simply a Scotch mist.
In context, it is as clear as
' It's been a right old day' and it has barely started. To which, one must carefully add 'You know' when you I keep shouting 'I don't bloody well know. Try to tell me. You know'
Could we publish a list of the timings of of( Oh, Yes), The Grumpy Old Whatsits.
Perhaps we could embellish the information with lots of appropriate 'drawrings'- or put them on a seperate(sic) sheet. You know!
Did anyone notice that I politically went off off topic?
For once I can't agree, these skills are nothing special; every blo**y overpaid, underworked, dopey politician, national or local has them. Likewise the "esteemed" members of our media are similarly equipped. The one good thing is that age and experience teaches even the stupid like me to recognize them, I think you call it cynicism.
Its a general irritation at the increasing trend to put apparently plausible, but mostly inaccurate and/or uninterpretable, metrics on things. This example seemed to be particularly useless.
Forgetting the actual math (which is not complicated either, although the way mathematicians write it is ..) for a moment, Bayes's theorem is very easy to explain.
Suppose the chance that an average growing tree shoot decides to branch to the left is 50% - but then also suppose that if there is a wall there it will branch to the right.
Bayes's theorem is simply a way of calculating this sort of thing - in the case of a branch known to be growing with a wall to it's left, the extra knowledge that there was a wall there changes the odds from 50% to 100%.
That's it, and all of it.
All statistics (the real, not-made-up kind), like race-course odds, depend upon the knowledge of the statistician to estimate the odds based on what he knows - if you know nothing you can't even guess, and if you think you know which horse will win but are wrong because of something-you-don't-know, eg if the fix is in and you don't know it, your estimation will be wrong.
Assuming the fix will be 99% effective, Bayes's theorem allows you to calculate the changed odds. Although in that case, there will be so many different factors and changed circumstances (perhaps the expected second was nobbled, perhaps expected the second and third) that it may be a bit useless.
That's all it is. People make a lot of it, I don't know why.
I think that the BBC get their weather report from the Met office as you can on the web. From then on the just embellish away to suit their political mentors. Not you licence payer, you just cough up the money for the group who colect and hand it over, who also have the sayso on what media misnomers the payer will get. About as far away from he who pays the piper calls the tune as you can get. Its a British Tass. Alan
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