Hell and High Histogramming – Mastering an Interesting Heat Wave Puzzle

Watts up with That? ^ | July 10, 2012 | Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

CNN ran with this story and quoted the US National Weather Service....FR thread:

Past 12 months warmest ever recorded in United States

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

89 Responses to Hell and High Histogramming – Mastering an Interesting Heat Wave Puzzle

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I will look thru them and post a few.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the comments:

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• Robert Brown says:

  July 10, 2012 at 10:24 pm

  As always, astounding reasoning, Willis. I find your conclusion flawless. I find that it also supports something that I have long suspected — few people are actually qualified to work with statistics or make statistical pronouncements. From what I recall, Jeff was only quoting some ass at NOAA, so perhaps it isn’t his fault. However, you really should communicate your reasoning to him. I think that there is absolutely no question that you have demonstrated that it is a Poisson process with significant autocorrelation — indeed, from the histogram (exactly as one would expect) and that as you say if anything it suggests that there have (probably) been other thirteen month stretches. It is also interesting to note that the distribution peaks at 5 months. That is, the most likely number of months in a year to be in the top 1/3 is between 1/3 and 1/2 of them!

  Yet according the reasoning of the unknown statistician at NOAA, the odds of having any interval of 5 months in the top third are . They seem to think that every month is an independent trial or something.

  Sigh.

  rgb

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

More:

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Murray Grainger says:

July 10, 2012 at 10:28 pm

1 in 2.6 is close enough to 1 in 1.6 million for the average climate alarmist; what’s your beef? Nothing that a little data adjustment won’t fix.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And a compliment to Willis:

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• captainfish says:

  July 10, 2012 at 10:34 pm

  Willis, Can I please borrow your brain for a few days.. I could make a gazillion dollars with all that extra smarts and speed of thought. I can’t even comprehend the amount of work and effort that it even took to come up with the line of analysis, let alone sit down with the data. But then, I still don’t have your brain. But then, unfortunately, not many scientists do either.
  Thank you, Sir.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Chuckle....more:

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Steve R says:

July 10, 2012 at 11:14 pm

This whole 1 in 1.6 million issue has been great entertainment. It’s also been an eye opener, to see so many climate scientists struggling with a fairly basic statistical concept.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Education tangent ....for me:

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Poisson distribution From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution (pronounced [pwasɔ̃]) is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time and/or space if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since the last event.^[1] (The Poisson distribution can also be used for the number of events in other specified intervals such as distance, area or volume.)

Suppose someone typically gets 4 pieces of mail per day. That becomes the expectation, but there will be a certain spread: sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, once in a while nothing at all.^[2] Given only the average rate, for a certain period of observation (pieces of mail per day, phonecalls per hour, etc.), and assuming that the process, or mix of processes, that produce the event flow are essentially random, the Poisson distribution specifies how likely it is that the count will be 3, or 5, or 11, or any other number, during one period of observation. That is, it predicts the degree of spread around a known average rate of occurrence.^[2]

The distribution's practical usefulness has been explained by the Poisson law of small numbers.^[3]

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Another chuckle from the comments:

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Dave Wendt says:

July 10, 2012 at 11:44 pm

It would appear that inadvertently Mr. Masters, or whoever provided him with his numbers, has arrived at a ratio that is quite correct, the only problem being the ratio is applied to the wrong query. If you ask “what are the odds of a story about a human caused plague of horrendous heatwaves, which appears in any Lamestream Media source, NOT being complete BS?” the ratio of 1 in 1.6 million appears, to my eye at least, to be just about spot on.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Related thread:

Heat wave, fires have climate change activists on offensive

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Not sure if anyone is checking this thread out....Statistics might be a BIG TURNOFF.

Anyway just letting you know about it.

Related thread:

Heat wave, fires have climate change activists on offensive

[Marine_Uncle]

Meanwhile, last week, in Peru the government was making a concerted effort to issue blankets out to the masses as they are experiencing lower then average temperatures in their early pangs of winter.
I forget where I read that article. Perhaps I should have posted it.

[Marine_Uncle]

RE: "Meanwhile, last week, in Peru the government was making a concerted effort to issue blankets out to the masses as they are experiencing lower then average temperatures in their early pangs of winter. I forget where I read that article. Perhaps I should have posted it."

TWANG!!!!! Now I remember where I read it.....
Here: Extreme winter weather in Peru: Government sending blankets to freezing people

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Got to have that posted here.

May I?... or do you want to?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I am waiting for a call back from my daughter on some urgent family business so it would be a while before I could do it....just as soon have you do it ....but we ought to get on here.

I think a lot of eyes see stuff here.

[Marine_Uncle]

OK Ernest. I’ll post it to the general news forums.

[Marine_Uncle]

I can’t post it. It is a blog site. I tried. FR bounced me.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Should go in this topic area....its why I post so much in it.

Just saves the headache.

[Marine_Uncle]

I suppose one could extract the content of the article then post it as a vanity or something. Bottom line is I went through the whole front end process providing all required fields and FR bounced me due to recognizing it as a blog site.
I'm a bit rusty on posting tricks at this point.