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>> I noticed something strange in the iOS weather app: The air quality index seems to be defined relative to the country from which one accesses the air quality

>> I noticed something strange in the iOS weather app: The air quality index seems to be defined relative to the country from which one accesses the air quality map. Yup. And if you look closely the underlying map also sometimes changes based on which country one is standing in (Crimea/Taiwan). Services like iOS are not scientific but consumer and government-focused services. They exist to appease a host of interested parties, not to render dispassionate information.

brookst 3y ago
Many products have multiple stakeholders. I can't think of a single product that exists "to render dispassionate information" and nothing else.
- verelo 3y ago
  I guess you don’t own a TV /s
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  To recognize stakeholders says nothing of their power dynamics. You're obfuscating by generalizing
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Really not sure what your point is? The temperature and humidity values that iOS Weather reports are objective and "dispassionate", no? Likewise wind speed and so forth? AQI is unique in this case, in that it is a color-coded interpretation of combining multiple underlying objective values (PM2.5, etc.). And different governments have chosen different official national schemes for this, according to what they want the population to consider "normal"/green. Which means that air-polluting industry in one country might lobby for a wider "green" band. Nothing like that is happening around temperature or humidity as far as I'm aware on iOS. (Though I do believe Beijing had a history of under-reporting official maximum daytime summer temperatures, since people couldn't work outdoors above a certain threshold.)
  - benatkin 3y ago
    > air-polluting industry Like producing food? A wider green band than what, the Netherlands map? I think it's nice to be able to aspire to live in a green area. That one leaves little options, and paints a bleak picture.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    The way things are going I’m sure there will be some questioning the temperature and humidity values and how we really know if they are true or not.
    - crazygringo 3y ago
      As long as we can buy thermometers and hygrometers to verify with our own eyes, I don't think too many people will be questioning them. And as long as ice continues to freeze at 32°F and water continues to boil at 212°F, I don't think anybody will be questioning the accuracy of the thermometers they buy.
  - mistercheph 3y ago
    No, they are neither objective nor dispassionate, despite being grounded in empirical data and methods. Factors like building shade, vehicle density, wind cover, terrain, cloud coverage, and variations in humidity, mean that thermometers placed at different points in any selected area will report massive variations in temperature, and the naive (and impossible) approach of even distributions of identical sensors taking measurements at the same clock times placed across some given weather area will yield numbers that are not helpful for most people. For example, about 1/3 of the area of Burbank, CA is recreation and park spaces that are in the verdugo mountains, at their highest point within Burbank limits 1800 ft. above sea level, and with almost zero residents. The other 2/3 of Burbank are about 600 ft. above sea level. How would you offer a number that summarized the weather in Burbank? Imagine factoring time into this. There is no temperature of the hour, there are individual measurements taken at specific moments in time in specific places, using differing methodologies, different equipment, variations in MoE, and at varying frequencies. Put all this together, and the work of the observational meteorologist to produce daily or hourly temperature averages becomes extremely complicated, and the first question they would ask is, "What will the averages be used for?" Here are some examples from the large literature on these problems: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07055900.2015.1135784 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07055900.2015.1... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169496031289 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-935704-35-5_14 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-935704-35-5_...
mfer 3y ago
Who defines what is “good” air quality in a dispassionate way? Or any of the other levels. If they just showed numbers without colors, how would the UX work for the general public who isn’t all that knowledgeable? Building a useful [1] experience while dealing with groups who read things differently isn’t easy and it’s not going to lead to global consistency because people are diverse and inconsistent [1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-...
- mattnewton 3y ago
  I think the poster is referring to governments that want to control this information too. There are often allegations that China is censoring AQI information for political purposes on iOS https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/30/weather-app-air-quality/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/30/weather-app-air-quality/ I believe one of the controversial aspects of Google’s “project dragonfly”, (the now scrapped reintroducing-google-search-for-China initiative) were modules that check with Chinese government servers for displaying knowledge cards deemed sensitive, and air quality reports were one of those. https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/27/google-employees-letter-censored-search-engine-china-project-dragonfly https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/27/google-em...
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  Maybe the WHO? If the air makes people sick is a pretty objectively quantifiable question. The differences go beyond unit conversion and a main issue is how much we are used to tolerate people dying early or having seriously reduced quality of their lives because of pollution. Especially in urban and industrial areas. What adds to the complexity is that air quality can vary significantly within a city. Compare having a flat between two busy roads and a nice house in the suburbs. And compare that flat between two busy roads to a room next to a factory in the global south, or the US, or in Europe. It's a question of how many suicides, cancers, strokes etc we want to tolerate. There are studies quantifying the effects of these "local differences". And they are easy to find. To me, pretending this was a question of culture or genetics is malicious obfuscation of the actual issues - not accusing you personally, but this is the essence of the combination of many of the comments here. Air quality is measurable using several objective categories of pollutants. Standardizing the units is one issue, facing the reality of millions of casualties per year is another one.

brookst 3y ago

Many products have multiple stakeholders. I can't think of a single product that exists "to render dispassionate information" and nothing else.

verelo 3y ago
I guess you don’t own a TV /s
wahnfrieden 3y ago
To recognize stakeholders says nothing of their power dynamics. You're obfuscating by generalizing
crazygringo 3y ago
Really not sure what your point is? The temperature and humidity values that iOS Weather reports are objective and "dispassionate", no? Likewise wind speed and so forth? AQI is unique in this case, in that it is a color-coded interpretation of combining multiple underlying objective values (PM2.5, etc.). And different governments have chosen different official national schemes for this, according to what they want the population to consider "normal"/green. Which means that air-polluting industry in one country might lobby for a wider "green" band. Nothing like that is happening around temperature or humidity as far as I'm aware on iOS. (Though I do believe Beijing had a history of under-reporting official maximum daytime summer temperatures, since people couldn't work outdoors above a certain threshold.)
- benatkin 3y ago
  > air-polluting industry Like producing food? A wider green band than what, the Netherlands map? I think it's nice to be able to aspire to live in a green area. That one leaves little options, and paints a bleak picture.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  The way things are going I’m sure there will be some questioning the temperature and humidity values and how we really know if they are true or not.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    As long as we can buy thermometers and hygrometers to verify with our own eyes, I don't think too many people will be questioning them. And as long as ice continues to freeze at 32°F and water continues to boil at 212°F, I don't think anybody will be questioning the accuracy of the thermometers they buy.
- mistercheph 3y ago
  No, they are neither objective nor dispassionate, despite being grounded in empirical data and methods. Factors like building shade, vehicle density, wind cover, terrain, cloud coverage, and variations in humidity, mean that thermometers placed at different points in any selected area will report massive variations in temperature, and the naive (and impossible) approach of even distributions of identical sensors taking measurements at the same clock times placed across some given weather area will yield numbers that are not helpful for most people. For example, about 1/3 of the area of Burbank, CA is recreation and park spaces that are in the verdugo mountains, at their highest point within Burbank limits 1800 ft. above sea level, and with almost zero residents. The other 2/3 of Burbank are about 600 ft. above sea level. How would you offer a number that summarized the weather in Burbank? Imagine factoring time into this. There is no temperature of the hour, there are individual measurements taken at specific moments in time in specific places, using differing methodologies, different equipment, variations in MoE, and at varying frequencies. Put all this together, and the work of the observational meteorologist to produce daily or hourly temperature averages becomes extremely complicated, and the first question they would ask is, "What will the averages be used for?" Here are some examples from the large literature on these problems: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07055900.2015.1135784 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07055900.2015.1... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022169496031289 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221... https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-935704-35-5_14 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-935704-35-5_...

mfer 3y ago

Who defines what is “good” air quality in a dispassionate way? Or any of the other levels. If they just showed numbers without colors, how would the UX work for the general public who isn’t all that knowledgeable? Building a useful [1] experience while dealing with groups who read things differently isn’t easy and it’s not going to lead to global consistency because people are diverse and inconsistent [1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-...

mattnewton 3y ago
I think the poster is referring to governments that want to control this information too. There are often allegations that China is censoring AQI information for political purposes on iOS https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/30/weather-app-air-quality/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/30/weather-app-air-quality/ I believe one of the controversial aspects of Google’s “project dragonfly”, (the now scrapped reintroducing-google-search-for-China initiative) were modules that check with Chinese government servers for displaying knowledge cards deemed sensitive, and air quality reports were one of those. https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/27/google-employees-letter-censored-search-engine-china-project-dragonfly https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/27/google-em...
moritzwarhier 3y ago
Maybe the WHO? If the air makes people sick is a pretty objectively quantifiable question. The differences go beyond unit conversion and a main issue is how much we are used to tolerate people dying early or having seriously reduced quality of their lives because of pollution. Especially in urban and industrial areas. What adds to the complexity is that air quality can vary significantly within a city. Compare having a flat between two busy roads and a nice house in the suburbs. And compare that flat between two busy roads to a room next to a factory in the global south, or the US, or in Europe. It's a question of how many suicides, cancers, strokes etc we want to tolerate. There are studies quantifying the effects of these "local differences". And they are easy to find. To me, pretending this was a question of culture or genetics is malicious obfuscation of the actual issues - not accusing you personally, but this is the essence of the combination of many of the comments here. Air quality is measurable using several objective categories of pollutants. Standardizing the units is one issue, facing the reality of millions of casualties per year is another one.