It's getting hot in here!

[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.  

[Thorongil]

1 minute ago, hk blues said:

That wasn't the question though.  

It was part of the discussion. I’ll be clearer then. “Statistics” is not a science, even if someone says it is on the internet. Neither is economics. Neither is accountancy. 

That’s simply the truth of the matter.

[Abdul_Latif]

Plenty folk on twitter and the like genuinely suggesting / demanding we should be shutting schools and workplaces cause it’s a bit hot.

What a bunch of work shy lazy b*****ds the Brits are.

Pretty sure Greece, Spain, Southern Italy etc manage to go to their work in the summer without this nonsense.

[craigkillie]

16 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

Statistics is science? How’s that?

In what way is it not? It's a branch of mathematics, and mathematics is very clearly a science. It's a subject which focuses on observing and collecting data and using it to develop an understanding of the underlying system which generates those data.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/science

I suspect that your surprise about this comes from a misapprehension about what statistics actually involves and how it works.

Edited July 19, 2022 by craigkillie

[Dawson Park Boy]

Just now, Abdul_Latif said:

Plenty folk on twitter and the like genuinely suggesting / demanding we should be shutting schools and workplaces cause it’s a bit hot.

What a bunch of work shy lazy b*****ds the Brits are.

Pretty sure Greece, Spain, Southern Italy etc manage to go to their work in the summer without this nonsense.

I agree but maybe you’re just saying that because schools are on holiday?

[coprolite]

15 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

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

There are many types of prediction of which forecasting (modelling based on past data) is one. 

Not all predictions are forecasts. All forecasts are predictions. (apparently, still sore about this tbh). 

[Thorongil]

5 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

In what way is it not? It's a branch of mathematics, and mathematics is very clearly a science. It's a subject which focuses on observing and collecting data and using it to develop an understanding of the underlying system which generates those data.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/science

I suspect that your surprise about this comes from a misapprehension about what statistics actually involves and how it works.

Even that page you’ve quoted has a distinction between “math” and science.

[welshbairn]

10 minutes ago, Abdul_Latif said:

Plenty folk on twitter and the like genuinely suggesting / demanding we should be shutting schools and workplaces cause it’s a bit hot.

What a bunch of work shy lazy b*****ds the Brits are.

Pretty sure Greece, Spain, Southern Italy etc manage to go to their work in the summer without this nonsense.

I worked on a building site in Greece in the summer, we started at 5am and finished at noon. Also the windows all had shutters to keep the sun out but keeping the air flowing. They organise it that way because high 30s isn't just a couple of days every decade or so..

Edited July 19, 2022 by welshbairn

[Thorongil]

6 minutes ago, coprolite said:

There are many types of prediction of which forecasting (modelling based on past data) is one. 

Not all predictions are forecasts. All forecasts are predictions. (apparently, still sore about this tbh). 

Many types of prediction huh? Can you list 5? 

It can also be safely argued that all predictions are forecasts, whether they are based on anything or not. 

[Squirrelhumper]

10 minutes ago, Abdul_Latif said:

Plenty folk on twitter and the like genuinely suggesting / demanding we should be shutting schools and workplaces cause it’s a bit hot.

What a bunch of work shy lazy b*****ds the Brits are.

Pretty sure Greece, Spain, Southern Italy etc manage to go to their work in the summer without this nonsense.

Their workplaces and schools are all air conditioned. Ours aren;t. 

[BFTD]

11 minutes ago, Stellaboz said:

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. 

How does Germany cope with high temperatures? 40°C is a standard daily summer temperature throughout the Southwest of America, and everything is refrigerated over there - people quickly hop between climate-controlled buildings. They'd find it intolerable to endure those kind of temperatures with just a wee desk fan or whatever.

Unless you're in the bottom 10%, of course, but nobody gives a f**k about those poor b*****ds.

[Billy Jean King]

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

The equipment needs to be calibrated to confirm. Can take a day or two. Mind a few years back they thought Lanarkshire had broken the Scottish record only for it to be disallowed after they found a car had been parked close enough to the recording equipment to have caused reflection of the sun to an extent it invalidated the reading. All needs ratifying. Looks like overnight UK record was topped last night too.

[TheScarf]

8 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

Even that page you’ve quoted has a distinction between “math” and science.