Scientific Predictions Are Not Always Accurate And Helpful

* Time series- use of a model to predict future values based on previously observed values.

What are some of the methods used to study weather patterns? Do you think the data collected can help to predict future climatic conditions?

The atmosphere is a chaotic system, so small changes to one part of the system can grow to have large effects on the system as a whole. This makes it difficult to accurately predict weather more than a few days in advance, though weather forecasters are continually working to extend this limit through the scientific study of weather, meteorology. It is theoretically impossible to make useful day-to-day predictions more than about two weeks ahead, imposing an upper limit to potential for improved prediction skill.

Life is full of surprises but there are three things that ultimately determine how you live your life: past, present, and the future. We live our daily lives on those three fundamentals. For example, if it was cold yesterday and it is still cold now, it will probably still be cold tomorrow. This is the same way for Presidential elections. If a candidate were to maintain their strong lead from the beginning of the election, unless something were to happen, it is expected that they will continue that lead in the future as well. So if meteorologists are able to reliably predict the outcome of the weather, can Psephologists reliably predict the outcome of the presidential election before the voting deadline of November 8th?

Although meteorologist hardly acknowledge that their forecasts are not completely accurate, it is clear that without them the amount of harm would be great. The information of a possible tornado formation helps the public become prepared to the possibility of a tornado. Tornadoes warning systems have come a long way from the days where they were inaccurate and unreliable. Lead times have increased and are becoming more reliable. However, more sensitive technology is needed until forecasts can become more

Economics is often called the "science of decision making." The decisions that economists analyze range from personal decisions such as how big a pizza to order or whether to buy or lease a new car to the decisions the federal government makes about things like the size of our military. Economists use information about these, and other decisions, to develop indicators that can be used to determine the health of our economy. Just as a physician relies on indicators such as temperature, blood pressure and heart rate to determine the health of a patient, economists use indicators like gross domestic product growth, the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation to predict our

1. It is hard to imagine a world without weather forecasts as they have become so indispensable to so many facets of everyday life in the 21st Century.

Makridakis, S., Wheelwright, S. C. & Hyndman, R. J. (1998). Forecasting Methods and Applications, (3rd Edition). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In this chapter he talks about the swine flu ‘epidemics’ of the late seventies and of 2009 serve as an example of how extrapolation can lead to improper predictions, particularly if you assume that things will keep proceeding as they have in the recent past. It notes that self-fulfilling and self-canceling prophecies complicate the process of determining the future, by altering which directions the given traits proceed and altering their progress. The efforts to change the progress of certain events, helping the good and thwarting the bad, mean that many traits change their course from their initial progress (as when the swine flu outbreaks were stopped shortly after starting). Self-fulfilling predictions can be caused by the sheer act of releasing the prediction. For example, when news about H1N1 flu is broadcast, more people go to doctors and more H1N1 is identified. Self-cancelling predictions can also occur. Navigation systems show where the least traffic is but simultaneously invalidate the route by sending all traffic there en masse. Chapter 7 deals with the dangers of extrapolation and overly simplistic assumptions, using misfiring flu-predictions as an example. Also discussed here are self-fulfilling and self-cancelling predictions. Often the very act of prediction can alter the way people behave (an observation that also John Adams makes with regard to risk - a form of prediction, of course -

An objective theory that predicts future events can only be possible when dealing with the five senses. Once there is a pattern of the same things reoccurring over and over again, a universal law starts to develop. This means that no matter what, some things will always be true, while other things will always be false. One’s beliefs, whatever they may be, have no manner on the facts of the world. Some facts of the world include the sun rising, women being able to carry a baby, and even evolution. Another example is the Uncertainty Reduction Theory, which describes that when interacting with people, one may need certain information about the person in order to reduce their uncertainty. In the event that one does gain more information about the other person or

The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail but Some Don’t talks about how many different statistics are used in everyday life. The book dissects the ways that people try to predict the future by look at past patterns that occur and they try to infer about the future. The book talks about how the statistics that are used by people to infer about the what will occur in the future. The Signal and the Noise does this in a good way because it uses different statistics that many people enjoy or at least know can be useful with topics ranging from sports betting and poker hands to weather and the housing market. It uses these statistics to show how certain times people can predict the future by using statistics from the past but these predictions are not always correct. The book offers many different statistics to show how predictions usually are wrong but can be correct when looking at these statistics under a different light.

There are already mechanisms in place that are used to predict high and low years for weather temperatures and rainfall. In 1997, prior to the El Nino in 1997-1998 (called El Nino 97/98), the scientific community was able to surveil and predict its occurrence, thus giving weather researchers and their science, credibility by the public and those who make decisions. (Below is a historical table of all recorded El Nino events).

We all have that one friend or family member that proudly claims to be an expert in predicting the rainy days or the sudden change in weather conditions, especially in moments when not even the meteorology institutions can precisely forecast the weather changes.

First it must be noted, that no forecasting technique can be certain, however, they can come close to a possible, preferable, or probable future. Second, the further into the future the predictions the higher the uncertainty of the forecast (Gordon, 2009). The reason for greater uncertainty is the possible of a wild card or black swam event happening that would be a total surprise and have a major effect on the long term

A different analysis applies for the things that are actually predictable. You don’t go to sleep thinking that tomorrow you are going to wake up bald. You take for granted that if the night before you had a long hair, tomorrow it still be that way. But what happens with things that we believe are predictable and they are really not? For example, I wake up every day at the same time to go to work, I take the same route and I drive at a constant velocity, but with all that variables together is impossible to warranty that I will always arrive at the same time. In this case, I have to consider unpredictable externalities that would definitely affect my travel.