[Offtopic] Line fitting [was Re: Numpy outlier removal]
Robert Kern
robert.kern at gmail.com
Tue Jan 8 17:59:06 EST 2013
On 08/01/2013 20:14, Chris Angelico wrote:
> 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;
Actually, you did. You stated that "a ~0.6 deg increase across ~30 years [is
h]ardly statistically significant". Ignoring the confusion between statistical
significance and practical significance (as external criteria like the
difference between the nominal temp and absolute 0 or the right criteria that I
mentioned has nothing to do with statistical significance), you made a positive
claim that it wasn't significant.
> I gave three examples.
You gave negligently incorrect ones. Whether your comments were on topic or not,
you deserve to be called on them when they are wrong.
> 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.
FUD is a fourth.
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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