[Offtopic] Line fitting [was Re: Numpy outlier removal]

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:55 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/01/2013 06:35, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> ... it looks
>> quite significant to show a line going from the bottom of the graph to
>> the top, but sounds a lot less noteworthy when you see it as a
>> half-degree increase on about (I think?) 30 degrees, and even less
>> when you measure temperatures in absolute scale (Kelvin) and it's half
>> a degree in three hundred.
>
> Why on Earth do you think that the distance from nominal surface
> temperatures to freezing much less absolute 0 is the right scale to compare
> global warming changes against? You need to compare against the size of
> global mean temperature changes that would cause large amounts of human
> suffering, and that scale is on the order of a *few* degrees, not hundreds.
> A change of half a degree over a few decades with no signs of slowing down
> *should* be alarming.

I didn't say what it should be; I gave three examples. And as I said,
this is not the forum to debate climate change; I was just using it as
an example of statistical reporting.

Three types of lies.

ChrisA