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"The further you get from the government’s original data, and the more consumer facing the forecasts, the worse this bias becomes. Forecasts “add value” by subt
by Intermernet 12y ago
"The further you get from the government’s original data, and the more consumer facing the forecasts, the worse this bias becomes. Forecasts “add value” by subtracting accuracy."
As interesting as this is, isn't it obvious that the further you get from the primary source, and the more consumer facing a report is, the less accurate it's going to be? This is the only opportunity for interested parties in the info-chain to massage the data to suit their own ends (Not necessarily nefarious, just selfish). If it's going to happen, this is where it will happen.
After all, we take the news we see on TV with a cellar of salt, so why would we believe the weather?
- angry_octet 12y agoActually a meteorologist isn't just massaging the data. Models often have know biases, eg under predicts rain when there is an offshore wind, or doesn't model complex local topography and gets mixing wrong, etc. Forecasters use their local knowledge to tweak the forecast, and achieve significant accuracy gains. But people are expensive, so they are affordable for high impact cases, like aviation weather.