Re: Weather Forecasts (was Laws and Theories)

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

        I first heard of about experiential forecasting in a talk by
Norbert Weiner at MIT in the early '50's.  At that time, according to him,
experiential forecasting had a higher rate of success than any of the
more sophisticated schemes.  I think that there was a certain amount of
hyperbole in the statement; the weather forecast for d-day in 1944 was
not experiential and was reasonably accurate.  It was based upon an
understanding of the movement of weather patterns from west to east.
                                Regards,
                                        Jack

Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
not up.
                          Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Joel Rauber wrote:

> As a side note, we had a local meteorologist visit our department who
> described experiential forcasting as using his own experience to adjust what
> forecasts they downloaded off of the computer predictions.  I took this to
> mean that if in their experience these forcasts tended to predict the
> temperature of Sioux Falls to be a little high, they might arbitrarily lower
> their temperature prediction by a few degrees. etc
>
> Joel Rauber
>
> > *I don't debate Leigh's version of the story, but my guess is that
> > nowadays "experiential" forecasting refers to the forecast
> > made by using
> > the forecaster's understanding of climatology or "experience"
> > (i.e., what
> > is the average for that day and what is normal given the conditions).
> >
> > On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Leigh Palmer wrote:
> >
> >
> > > The speaker replied "What is experiential forecasting? Experiential
> > > forecasting is predicting that tomorrow's weather will be
> > like today's."
> > > Leigh