39 ms·

Man, I need to know when to plant corn.

• marquis 14y ago
  Spend enough time on a farm and it doesn't become that difficult to figure out: you guess, based on what you know about the seasonal weather. Watson is never going to know more about the weather than you can get on weather.com.
  • dbuxton 14y ago
    Actually farmers already pay lots of money for localised weather forecasts exactly because there is a significant amount of information that weather.com doesn't give you. Not sure what 10 racks of PCs will be able to add to the science of weather forecasting though, given the scale of investment necessary to be a player in that field: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/in-depth/supercomputers http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/in-depth/supercomputers (although the Met Office do use IBM...)
    • marquis 14y ago
      Right, I was of course being glib about weather.com. It may then be a useful service for something with Watson's capabilities to narrow down to your specific needs and historical data. I am fascinated by weather prediction, it's an interesting field, and I find I can't trust any detailed weather reading more than 3 days in advance (aside from large weather patterns, which seems readable for about 10 days ahead) so if there is something out there that works longer-range it would be quite amazing to know.
  • randomdata 14y ago
    I really do wonder what Watson could add. We always plant corn as close to May 1st as possible as that is what the generations that came long before me determined was best for the conditions here. Neighbours have tried deviating from that date, but the results have always been poor. Now if Watson could accurately tell me when to sell my corn to maximize profit, that would be pretty awesome.