Are you out of your mind? So when the world temperature is 2% lower than the year before you're going to say we're heading into an ice aged.
BY DEFINITION IF WE'RE 2% ABOVE AVERAGE THERE WERE YEARS WHEN IT WAS 2% BELOW AVERAGE. --- On Thu, 1/13/11, Dan Covill <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Dan Covill <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [OT] Figures show 2010 hottest year on record > To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> > Date: Thursday, January 13, 2011, 4:10 PM > On 1/13/2011 12:26 PM, Michael > Madigan wrote: > > Nick, > > > > If your cholesterol averages 180 and your doctor tells > you it's now 183.6, do you panic? > > > > If your blood pressure averages 120 and your doctor > tells you it is now 122.4 do you admit yourself to the > hospital? > > > > If your electric bill is normally 200 bucks a month > and this month it's 204, do you beat your kids? > > Michael, > To paraphrase some of your posts, you don't > seem to understand much > about statistics. > > To take your second example, that is not a parallel. > You are correct > that if your blood pressure averages 120 and it is now > 122.4 that is not > a big deal. But if your blood pressure has averaged > 120 over the last > 20 years, and THIS YEAR'S AVERAGE is 122.4, then that is > evidence of a > non-trivial variation. Probably not a good reason to > kill yourself, but > certainly cause for some continued attention. > > A "world average" is the mean of thousands of data > points. The more > data points you have, the more reliable the measurements > (mean, stddev, > etc) are, and the smaller a variance has to be to be > significant. Which > is why some of us keep trying to tell you that whether it > snows or rains > on any given day is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT. > > Notice that I didn't call you an idiot. (But the > thought is always there.) > > Dan Covill > > _______________________________________________ > Post Messages to: [email protected] > Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox > OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech > Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox > This message: > http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] > ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are > the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or > medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for > those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious. > _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
