3 ms·

Look, it's just a requirement to know the weather 3 months in advance. A lot of money is riding on this: agricultural impacts, shipping, the effect on consumer

Look, it's just a requirement to know the weather 3 months in advance. A lot of money is riding on this: agricultural impacts, shipping, the effect on consumer behavior and power generation requirements. Doing without accurate weather reports 3 months out is just not acceptable. Sure, it's hard, but you have to just do it anyway, because it's so important. ... Except weather reports 3 months out are not reliable, unless they are so vague as to be meaningless. I have frequently encountered people who claim to be able to give accurate software estimates. Inevitably, this means that they simply know how to cut requirements as the promised ship date arrives. Which is a useful skill, but not the same as accurate estimates. I have stopped arguing the point, because it doesn't matter what the reality is, business concerns mean that an estimate is required sometimes. But it doesn't mean anything more than the weather estimate for 3 months from now. If you got it right, you were mostly lucky.

jstepka 5y ago
it's so weird. i know it'll be cold in feb in minnesota. i know this because i have experience. and that experience translates into my ability to give guidance. if you want to be taken serious, you need experience to be able to estimate.
- regularfry 5y ago
  4F or 12F? Come on, which is it? If it's above 8F I can get away with a cheaper antifreeze next year, but I need to put the order in next week. "Cold" is not an adequate analogy for the sorts of estimates that non-delivery parts of businesses seem to think they are entitled to, and it's not reasonable to say people can't be taken seriously for rejecting that trap.
- nitwit005 5y ago
  This is the "it never rains" strategy of weather reporting. On most days, it's not raining, so you'll be right most of the time. Some may claim they have personally experienced rain, so your model must have some faults, but just ignore those plebeians.

jstepka 5y ago

it's so weird. i know it'll be cold in feb in minnesota. i know this because i have experience. and that experience translates into my ability to give guidance. if you want to be taken serious, you need experience to be able to estimate.

regularfry 5y ago
4F or 12F? Come on, which is it? If it's above 8F I can get away with a cheaper antifreeze next year, but I need to put the order in next week. "Cold" is not an adequate analogy for the sorts of estimates that non-delivery parts of businesses seem to think they are entitled to, and it's not reasonable to say people can't be taken seriously for rejecting that trap.
nitwit005 5y ago
This is the "it never rains" strategy of weather reporting. On most days, it's not raining, so you'll be right most of the time. Some may claim they have personally experienced rain, so your model must have some faults, but just ignore those plebeians.