These are fair concerns. The journalist just wrote a related blog post at http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/modern-thermometers-1132/ http://blogs.wsj.com/number

These are fair concerns. The journalist just wrote a related blog post at http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/modern-thermometers-1132/ http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/modern-thermometers-1132/ that discusses the "experience" of temperature more. An improvement on the analysis might be to adjust all the temperatures for humidity and wind speed etc. before calculating the deviations below 60 F and above 80 F. My company's system doesn't do that because those other factors are much less important for energy consumption calculations (which is what degree days are traditionally used for). But I think they probably would be good factors to include for a more thorough analysis of human comfort. (I say "probably" because the complexity would increase considerably and also the figures would become less clearly defined in a sense as well. So it wouldn't be 100% positive.)