Guest Opinion by Kip Hansen – 26 July 2022
I beg your forbearance if I step on your ideological or scientific-viewpoint’s toes with my essay today. But I hope to attract your attention long enough to make a point so important that it affects almost all empirical knowledge in our modern world. The point is so simple, yet so scientifically profound, that it might even sound silly to casual readers:
Numbers are just Numbers
~~ ~
The most famous and illustrative example (albeit, fictional) is Douglas Adams’, the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything“, as calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought, is “42”.
This is precisely my whole point here today; with a rather long afterword on why this is important enough to mention here at a science blog. Readers who already understand why “Numbers are Just Numbers” is so profoundly true and those who already understand the significance of this for modern science can move on and read about (boring) climate change topics.
[ Warning: This is not easy essay – it is a short dissertation on the scientific philosophy of numbers and their use in modern science with some cautions and will extend to two parts, at least. ]
~ ~ ~
From the book “The Science of Measurement: Historical Survey” by Herbert Klein we get the following quotes:
“…the tools and techniques of measurement provide the most useful bridge between the everyday worlds of the layman and of the specialists in science.”
“Non-scientists may be similarly impressed to discover that units of measurement – for length, area, volume, time duration, weight, and all the rest – are essentials of science.”
“[This work] …should prove serviceable to professionals in science, but its main purpose is to make outsiders realize that in their daily lives and concerns they too are involved in the activities and ideas classified as metrology, the science of measurement – a subdivision of science that underlies and assists all others.”
And what is metrology? “Metrology is the scientific study of measurement.”
And what is measurement? “Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events.”
And what is quantification? “…quantification is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into quantities. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.”
And what is counting? “Counting is the process of determining the number of elements of a finite set of objects” such as its physical attributes.
~ ~ ~
All measurement is, at its most basic, simply counting – the number of beans, coins, stars, inches, lightyears…(and all other units of measurement). The result of counting is a number – the number of “elements” – of the things counted.
And what is a number? “A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth.”
~ ~ ~
So, the basic activity of Science is counting or measuring — a specific type of counting against pre-established , internationally-agreed-upon units of some quality/property such as temperature or weight or length or foot/lbs and many many more. There are a lot of different methods of measuring different things with vastly different tools at a wide variety of scales. Nonetheless, they are all really just types of counting.
Alas, when we (or you or they) count, the result is a number – which is nothing more than a mathematical object – “A mathematical object is an abstract concept arising in mathematics”. The number counted alone, of course, is not a thing at all – only an abstract concept — until the counted number is clearly stated as “number of whatevers?” – number of peaches, number of inches of 2×4 board, number of monarch butterflies at any given moment, number of any of the SI units under the International System of Units of various physical properties of something.
Numbers can be tricky….just because they are numbers – like 1, 2, 85, 400 million, 3.432 — some think we can just willy-nilly apply all types of mathematical processes to them: add them up, subtract them, multiply them, add them up and divide them into averages and/or average them spatially with various methods of distance weighting and kriging – all this is meant to produce physically meaningful results.
To make matters worse, statisticians often think that they can then take those numbers churned out by all the above processes and wring out even more meaningful results not otherwise visible to the human mind.
But does all that Mathematica-ing produce physically meaningful results?
While some interesting things can be done with numbers and statistics, many fields of modern science have often gone far down the slippery slope of reification of numbers – often creating whole fields worth of non-physical data – like Global Average Surface Temperature, an entirely imaginary nonphysical number. Similarly, modern oceanic scientists have created the imaginary concept of Eustatic Sea Level – a “would have been” not-really-a-physical-level level.
SIDE BAR: “Reification is when you think of or treat something abstract as a physical thing. “ Remember, these numbers are mathematical abstracts.
In a two-decade old BMJ article, it is acknowledged that:
“Many people only respect evidence about clinical practice [think also: biology, climate science, geology, psychology, ad infinitum ] that is couched in the highly abstract language of graphs and statistical tables, which are themselves visualisations of abstract relations pertaining among types of numbers, themselves again abstractions about ordinary phenomena.” [ source ]
Thus, we find ourselves reading articles and essays and journal papers filled with abstractions about abstractions about ordinary phenomena.
In practice, we call these abstractions numbers or data sets or even “the data” and then we/somebody makes them into various visual presentations – charts and graphs and pretty pictures — intended to sell their favorite hypothesis or to refute your favorite hypothesis.
~ ~ ~
Preview of Part 2:
In Part 2, I will consider why it is that
“One cannot average temperatures.”
Really.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
I have been accused in the past of not liking numbers, of hating numbers, of not understanding mathematics, of not understanding statistics and being a general math-o-phobe. This is not true –not only do I love the beauty and certainty of mathematics, but I am also a true pragmatist.
“one who judges by consequences rather than by antecedents.”
Not a real fan of blind trust in so-called experts – experts, in my opinion, have to be able to show their work in the real world.
I am well aware of the many problems of scientific modern research, including that all fields of science are returning a lot of questionable results – even in fields closely monitored like medicine. It is my belief that much of this is functionalized by “too much math, not enough thinking” or the reification of mathematical and statistical results.
“I could be wrong now, but I don’t think so.”
(h/t Randy Newman)
Free-for-all on this topic in comments.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
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I wonder how many people like Bell’s palsy.
Scissor ==> Now, THAT is an unexpected comment.
A lot of things are. Unexpected. Cheers
Scissor ==> Frighteningly, I love your sense of humor…..
I like your articles, not in a Bell’s palsy sense, but in the way they ponder one to think about things from a different perspective. They’re very enjoyable to read.
Karl Popper listed surprise as a good indicator of truth in his <i>Logic of Scientific Discovery.</i>
Doug ==> In my maturity, I find myself surprised everytime I learn something new — and any day I lear something new is a Good Day!
I get that after too much of this:
Statistics can be made to say whatever the person presenting wants them to say. Computer models say precisely what they are programed to say by those who program them. Beginning to see a pattern in climate catastrophics?
2hotel9 ==> I bambozzled a lot of them at Wm Briggs site with : https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/36178/
Kip, did you get my email on that particular topic?
Old Cocky ==> Have to check….I’ll look up your real email and check mine … if some time ago, yes.
Old Cocky ==> I don’t see any emails under your yahoo.com.au account. Want to re-send — my first name at i4.net
Third time lucky?
Cocky ==> YES! Got it….will have a look at it — but not til tomorrow….
Cool. I’m looking forward to your thoughts on it.
Mark Twain wrote that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. He passed away in 1910, long before anyone worried about global warming, but what would he have said about today’s number manipulators trying to scare people away from keeping warm?
I’ve read that it was really Dr. Roger Revelle who took the established (established but not really proven) theory of greenhouse gas warming, and turned it into something alarming, starting in the 1950’s:
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/Coleman.pdf
Before Revelle’s work, hardly anyone would have thought that a bit of warming was of any big concern, it seems. Of course, getting alarmed must have been an idea whose time had come, being seized upon eventually then by everyone from government officials to NASA administrators, scientist’s unions or associations, etc.
As to the general abuse of number concepts, it really is a bit mysterious how empiricism — the ability to actually handle measurements properly and verify either the usefulness or the uselessness of theories thereby — has fallen by the wayside in so many areas of publicly consequential science these days.
Interesitng. A few years back, I read D.S. Halacy’s “Fuel Cells: Power for Tomorrow” written in 1964 I think where he mentioned CO2 and global warming and I always wondered when the scare tactics actually began.
https://amzn.to/3zdJUtd
Except for true AI algorithms, which can go off and do whatever they want.
Retired ==> and apparently do so….
Which do not exist – true AI algorithms, that is. Today’s “AI” does exactly what it is programmed to do. Takes input numbers, manipulates them in some manner, and outputs numbers.
Whatever a computer does can be replicated by a human with paper and pencil. “AI” is only quantitatively different; i.e., that hypothetical human cannot perform the task in anywhere close to the time that the computer can. (In the case of supercomputer runs, beyond the theoretical heat death of the universe.)
Today’s ‘AI’ despite it’s name is little more than a Simulated Intelligence program, with preset parameters and data sets they are sophisticated programs but a universe away from what a true AI would be.
Al Gore rhythms have been out of sync for years.
How about AlGoreithms?
You spoke my mind. I was going to make the same suggestion, word by word.
Including assaulting/attacking humans
From the robo-surgeon that killed its patient to the driverless car that ran over a pedestrian: Worst robotic accidents in history – after chess robot breaks seven-year-old boy’s finger in Russia
That depends on the intellectual honesty of the programmer!
Looking at the “product” being produced their intellectual honesty is zero.
Or the size of the taxpayer funded research grants for the “right” type of statistics that governments agree with
The answer is 2.
Works for 1000 and 1001 and I think I’m quitting now while I can still do it in my head.
Goog algoreithm. Unfortunately, one cannot make money from it…
Complex mathematical / algebraic formula where: 2 = a+2-a
Too much math, no thinking at all.
“I made the formula say what I desire, and objective reality has no bearing.” – Modern Expert
roaddog ==> Well, real scientists do a lot of thinking but then they get those marvelous seductive data sets and can’t resist banging away at them with Mathematica and Statistica and all — they sort of lose their minds I think.
When you suggested in a previous article that modelers should get together in a room I thought of Monty Pythons argument sketch; my model is better than yours…no it isn’t; yes it is…no it isn’t…
Same for statisticians..similar room more arguments about which numbers are correct.
Mac ==> I think they do that skit in reality at AGU Conferences.
But the only “good” model is the Russian one, and the Russians are probably not allowed in the room.
The Russian model is “bad” — too close to being accurate, and not scary enough. Climate computer not wanted. Or we would already have them.
If they ever had them. Popularity is endemic among the liberal insanitii.
This is climate science you should always use alternative maths
22,000 upvotes!
I think the correct figure is $20,002,000
Pretty good. Now do genders. (Correct answer is 3, even in English).
No there’s way more than three, whatever maths you use, in the UK anyway
3. They keep relabelling the same 3 over and over again in slightly different ways until you end up with hundreds that all bear a remarkable similarity to the 3 they started with.
Douglas Murray in his book, “The War on the West” has a section where he describes the attempt to ‘deconstruct’ mathematics by proponents of critical race theory. One aspect of this was to question whether 2 + 2 = 4. “Others claimed that it was obvious that 2 + 2 cannot equal 4 and gave a variety of reasons. These included, but were not limited to, claims that 2 + 2 = 4 is part of a ‘hegemonic narrative’. that the people who make such narratives should not get to decide what is true, that 2 + 2 should equal whatever people want it to equal, and that making such a definitive statement excludes other ways of knowing. One PhD candidate took to social media to declare that ‘the idea of 2 + 2 equalling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonialism, we think of it as the only way of knowing.'” (Page 198)
If I recall, one of the examples to prove that 2 + 2 does not equal 4 is:
Imagine a factory that made 2 complete items and 1/2 of another. They recorded 2 completed items. They did the same the next day. Traditional math would conclude they completed 4 items, but when you combine the 2 half items you find there are actually 5 completed items! (I kid you not. I believe this examples came from California.)
But surely that then would be 2.5 + 2.5 = not 2 + 2 = wouldn’t it?
Math is hard.
The perils of mis-using statistics in an argument were highlighted by Winston Churchill when he said of an opponent during a Parliamentary debate, “The honourable gentleman uses statististics the way a drunk uses a lamp-post: more for support than for illumination.”
The best definition of confirmation bias I’ve ever come across…
Great topic Kip!
Numbers of Zeros in a Million, Billion, Trillion, and More
https://www.thoughtco.com/zeros-in-million-billion-trillion-2312346
Numbers Bigger Than a Trillion The digit zero plays an important role as you count very large numbers. It helps track these multiples of 10 because the larger the number is, the more zeroes are needed.
Millions, Billions, and TrillionsHow Can We Think About Really Large Numbers?
https://www.thoughtco.com/millions-billions-and-trillions-3126163
++++++++++++++++++++++++
How do you express large numbers?
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-do-you-express-large-numbers/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So this number, 240,000,000,000 which is 240 billion could be written as 2.4 X 10 to the 11th power because there are 11-#’s after the last whole number.
Kip, your post part one on numbers reminded me of a lesson learned long ago in college about economics. It was the main takeaway from a one semester course taught by John Kenneth Galbraith. I took it not so much for the subject matter (artificial demand creation via advertising based on his book ‘The Affluent Society’ on same) but because he was a truly funny professor. Example: he was debating Paul Samuelson of MIT, and claimed something that Samuelson disagreed with. So Samuelson asked Galbraith how he knew this was so? Galbraith responded, ‘Because I am the greatest living expert on it.’ Which brought the house down. But to the lesson.
Galbraith ran the Office of Price Administration (price fixing during WW2 shortages) for FDR. He learned a mental trick for summing a long column of numbers to within about 10% (answer, lots of rounding) in order to more quickly reach OPA decisions. A student (not me) asked him whether that was good enough for such important decisions. Galbraith replied, ‘If within ten percent isn’t good enough to answer the question, then you have the wrong question.’
Good enough for government work—and much else in life. Just get into the ballpark. It suffices for most things.
It was once said that if you asked a panel of 5 economists a question you would get 6 answers because JK Galbraith always changed his mind.
Nah.As I learned it, if you asked 3 economists you would get six answers…on the one hand, on the other hand. 3×2=6. Same basic joke.
Apparently you can just average all of the answers to get the correct one, as is done with climate model runs
Are these the same economists who predicted 18 of the last 3 recessions?
Stock investors predict too mamy recessions
Economists, as a group, never predict recessions.
This is why we need economists with only one hand
As a group. US economists
have never predicted a recession.
Not once.
That’s not a joke — it’s true.
They are about to do it again.
But,if all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion.
Auto.
What president was it that wanted the one armed economist? because economists always say “on the other hand…”
Truman?
Before sophisticated computer systems were widely in use by businesses (1960s), my early career work was in accounting / auditing production materials usage manually.
So we used a “practiced eye” to assess “first-pass fit” of manually compiled production reports numbers –
know approximately what reported total numbers should be,
add up whole tens or hundreds or thousands entries in your head,
compare to expected total,
if in the ballpark, call it “first-pass fit”,
then move on to next reports.
I’ve been using the “first-pass fit” technique for many & varied tasks all my life now.
Trying to teach the grandkids to use it now.
Mr. ==> Not an easy thing to teach, so Good Luck. Harder if they’ve been in school too long.
My lord have they complicated elementary math lessons.
It’s a major exercise now to arrive at 6 x 8 = 48.
I feel your pain, I’m also a grandchild maths tutor. One was struggling with multiplication of large decimal numbers 123.456×543.987 type calculations. In the the end I said i don’t care what you’ve been taught we’re doing it the way I learnt. The only problem was getting him to write neatly.
It’s important to be able to do mental calculations of approximate answers so you can say that doesn’t look right when using a calculator.
I went to a school in a little village. In the Co-op there was an assistant who was the most impressive I’ve ever met at mentally adding up £sd. People used to leave their shopping lists and collect the messages (shopping) later. He could do the calculation by running his pencil up the column of numbers in just a few seconds, this involved halves, 12s and 20s, correct every time. I’m still impressed 65 years later.
Ben ==> My older brother, who is/was almost entirely socially inept, practiced mental math tricks endless until he could do the same with long lists of numbers….I never understood the method.
Rud ==> Great story! I admit to having my own eccentric mental methods of checking maths and stats – some of which I have shared in various essays here.
But the #1 Lesson is to realize that those Numbers are Just Numbers — they are not the finding, not the meaning, and often not anything real at all!
Absolutely. The pursuit of precision, in order to corrupt it, is a pandemic all its own.
Is there a vaccine? Maybe we need another Warp Speed effort.
The First Law of Economics: For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist.
The numbers I think are most important are the actual amount of CO2 in the atmosphere- something less than 4 one hundredths of one percent and the amount of that which is naturally occurring- between 95-97% which we can’t do anything about – so the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from man’s industrial and transportation activity is minuscule and you would have to abandon all common sense to believe that a tiny amount of CO2 has any effect on the earth’s temperature or climate
tiny! tiny! and even the amount of projected warming is tiny (1-2 degrees C in 100 years). Even the tiny, were it not so tiny, would have no meaningfully negative effect on the planet or people.On top of all that, the term “climate change” has no meaning!
CO² does have effect, just a very small one that decreases logarithmically. After exceeding pre-industrial levels, say beyond 290 ppm, CO²’s ability to trap additional heat (longwave IR) drops dramatically. Think of adding layers of clothing on a cold day- the first couple of layers do a lot, the third helps a little more, and beyond that it does little to add additional warmth, but eventually makes you look like the Michelin Man. The whopper of GHGs is good old H²O, which itself varies massively with seasonal changes and very slight blips in global average temperatures (as best we can measure that)…
Similarly, heat water. Once it reaches 100C (at sea level) it will not get hotter no matter how much more heat you apply.
Irrelevant comparison
CO2 does not add heat
It impedes heat from escaping into the infinite heat sink of space
I dunno. Pressure cookers work perfectly well at sea level…
So do steam engines and steam turbines – if, only if, you have any fuel for their boilers….
Yes. And heat an ocean. Once it reaches 30C (at sea level obviously) it will not get hotter no matter how long you apply the heat.
A good thing really as it means, with the oceans being some 72% of the Earth’s surface that we can never get runaway global warming.
Alasdair ==> Explain for readers, please.
Complete nonsense.
About one third of the current 420 ppm of CO2 is manmade.
CO2 did not increase about +50% from 1850 naturally.
nature is still ABSORBING CO2, not a net CO2 emitter.
You are spouting nonsense.
You are the one spouting nonsense Richard. You seem to soak the propaganda like blotting paper.
But is it a problem? Surely the problems begin when we stop adding CO2 and nature is used to extracting what we;re adding. The decline will be more rapid than the increase.
I should ask how you know that for sure. Are you absolutely sure that all sinks and all sources have been found and accurately accounted for? Have all cycles that affect the sinks and sources been found and accounted for?
If there is even a 10% error in the amount sinks take up or in the amount of non-human caused CO2, your assertion would be wrong.
William,
Indeed.
So, to the nearest one tenth of one percent, there is Zero CO2 in the atmosphere.
Yet our economy, and our society, is being destroyed with that as an excuse.
Auto.
James ==> I love detailed readers who can catch my typos….there must be one spot in this essay where I have it misspelled but danged if I can find it. The proper spelling is
R E I F I C A T I O N used 3 times in the essay — help me out here.
Scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla was fascinated by number 3
I believe that number 3 had religious connotation for Tesla, his father was an orthodox christian priest, and orthodox christians (as I am) cross with 3 fingers (father, son & holly spirit) and many churches and graves feature triple cross.
Tesla turned ‘father, son & holly spirit’ to ‘energy, frequency, & vibration’ the basis of his universe’s existence understanding.
He invented a three–phase alternative current generators and motors, still in world wide use.
It is sad he would only stay in a hotel room containing no.3, walked 3 times about block, always used 3 napkins with his meals and all sorts of other nonsense.
Vuk ==> Tesla….wish we really knew what he was onto…..
Just an observation. Tesla has been a bit mythologized. He did understand AC versus DC. He did understand the implications of higher frequency AC (but not it’s negative implications). And some of his high frequency AC ideas proved later (with better mathematics) probably not very practical energetically. Always remember, lightning is a DC Helmholtz layer TStorm effect having NOTHING to do with Tesla.
Rud, my man, I never associated Tesla with lightning, but now the idea will not leave my mind!
Cudos for the most obscure joke ever. Or is it? I have no cookin’ clue.
Nobama identifying as 42!
Of course, the significance of the “number” 42 has nothing to do with math. Decimal 42 is the code for the symbol * in ascii, also known as the wild card character. That can stand for anything and everything. As in cd c:\ del *.* Bend over and kiss your hard drive goodbye.
Don’t even disclose or tell teenagers about DOS commands.
You know what havoc could be inflicted on pc’s all over the world.
As time went on, less & less of the “really good stuff” became
accessible to the end user (EU). This made life as a phone tech much easier as the most common fix was:: Replace EU!
It’s OK – they all use AppleDOS, or Unix.
Assuming that they can find the command prompt. It’s buried so far down when you use just mouse clicks that it’s effectively not there. (Why I stick with the “classic” UI on Windows. The wife’s machine, you can’t just right click the Start button and select Run. I fumble around every time.)
I think Douglas Adams was the first one to use 42 as a joke.
Objective Reality says:
42 x 0 = 0.
Because he’s a sociopathic narcissist, His Zeroness still identifies as 42!
Numbers are tricky & can take an unexpected turn!
Old Man ==> Really had to blow that image up to get the joke….thanks!
Lol
Always a problem as you take any lemma close to its defined zero, no matter how defined. Why more students should learn more math.
If the student took this to be a visual problem rather than a mathematical one then he/she/it/pumpkin produced a correct answer
While it looked like sheer genius treating numbers as
pure symbols, it was more than likely an act of desperation where she got lucky. Been there, done that!
I always liked this one
it the very useful ‘3-4-5’ triangle.
Carpenters use this to make a 90 degree angled cut, or measure.
Laying out a house foundation, 3/4/5 gets it square.
See the Alternative Maths video that LdB links to though.
Here’s another one: 16/64 –> cancel the 6’s you get 1/4. New math!!
So perfectly describes why Climate Scientists get away with calling climate a ‘non-linear system‘
Such is their maths – childlike scribblings given meaning.
A true non-linear system contains a singularity – the answer can be anything you want it to be = classically 42 or the ‘wild card’
Thus enter ‘reification’ = a lovely word to describe Magical Thinking = the process where (chronically chemically) depressed people brain-wash themselves.
iow: They apply the MSDOS “del *.*” command to their own minds
Its very easily done – so easy in fact that creatures with only one brain cell do it
They do it because they are desperately hungry. In that starvation state they start eating whatever they can and reification kicks in – they then truly believe that ‘the wrong thing’ is actually good for them.
Hopeless (Oh, I can handle it) alcoholics being the perfect example – convinced that booze is keeping them alive. (In really advanced states it actually is – suddenly stopping will ki11)
2 nice examples being swarming locusts and John Kerry (Thank Fug there’s only one of him – or is there?)
Biden is not in the race = his braincell count is the divisor in the above equation
edit to PS
You do see the significant fail of Climate Science – as the author here states.
Climate Science gives reality to something that is not real.
i.e. Temperature.
Temperature is a dimensionless quantity – it has no tangible or palpable reality.
It can represent reality but you have to carefully describe the object that you are taking the temperature of – you have to specify some real tangible things (metres, kilograms seconds) to the thing you are recording the temp of.
Thus Climate Science is one humongous lie – a lie by omission in that it never defines the ‘dimensions’ of what it’s recording the temp of.
The most basic omission is that the water content is never mentioned.
But to do so requires an admission that water controls climate
So simple, even a child could understand.
(Now do we see how deep the doo-doo we’re now in)
Good one.
We had a “science teacher”in high school who asked everyone in the class to bring in some ice cubes wrapped in a towel. She need dry ice fro an experiment. True story. A little later my father went to the headmaster and had her sacked after another episode.
Well Kip is Dr Rosling wrong when claims he used 120,000 data points to display the countries of the world from 1810 to 2010?
Of course he has used UN data and this optimistic 5 minute video wrecks all the alarmist’s arguments about a climate EMERGENCY or CRISIS or even Biden’s so called EXISTENTIAL threat.
And Willis Eschenbach’s ” where’s the Emergency” article also requires a lot of numbers to test all of their alarmist claims. And he does this point by point.
And Dr Christy also tested their data point by point and came to a similar conclusion.
AGAIN here’s Dr Rosling’s video. Any comments, anyone?
Spectacular use of graphics by Dr Rosling to prove an important fact. It’s
too bad my teachers didn’t have something like this when I was younger.
Neville ==> Rosling doesn’t really use any numbers in his presentation — he uses visual representation of relationships. He doesn’t misinterpret the numbers as being real things.
The relationships between wealth and lifespan, by nation and population, through time is what he is showing.
To do that, he needs numerical data, but not reified numerical data.
I have written here about Rosling
Kip, separate comment based on your observation ‘too much math, not enough thinking.’
When I was learning math modeling and econometrics at my University, there were no Mathematica packages, no PC’s with Excels and Rs. The University’ Aikens Computer Center housed an IBM 340 with ferrite core memory so max allowable program RAM was 250 kilobytes. (So I got an A for my discrete step Harvard Square traffic jam simulation model NOT because I could run it (needed more than 250kb to simulate the 7 streets feeding the Square at rush hour with each byte a vehicle in time and space) but rather because the professor was impressed with the hundreds of lines of Fortran code modeling the problem.) Much of what I had to learn was based on thinking a lot, then a little but hard to do back up math to make sure you were in the ballpark.
These days, with all the available PC programs, numbers produced by ‘math’ are ‘easy’, while thinking is not only still ‘hard’, but ‘unproductive’ since it takes time. Plus, not that many Uni educated types these days can think at all, let alone critically. I offer AOC as exhibit A. Which IMO results in a lot of the ‘publish or perish’ irreproducible junk statistical science in fields as diverse as medicine and climate that you and others allude to.
Take their computers away, and they would be absolutely lost.
I suspect a large amount of these junk papers are generated by chucking numbers into random stats packages until they get something that looks interesting, and then trying to work backwards to justify it.
Rud ==> Interstingly, when I was still a teen, I worked whole summer in a plant that manufactured those ferrite core memories, on night shift of course.
And I agree, Thinking is Hard. Not the trivial kind of thinking that passes for science today, but real deep thinking, out of the box thinking, true critical thinking, thinking bounded by the rules of logic and reality.
Kip, totally agree. Have often wondered, what would ‘science’ now be if we had to go back to hand threaded three wire ferrite cores. Of course, an idle speculation. I would miss many modern miracles like this iPad. But we do not adequately recognize the ‘easy but wrong’ side effects.
Rud ==> I gotta love all my way-too-many digital computing devices — several tablets, more than enough Lenovo laptops, I even buy too many for my wife — who does only email and an occassional letter.
You really want us to believe ‘for my wife’ is the reason you buy them?
John ==> Come on…gimme a break here….
Kip,
In 1976 I flew (economy) with colleague Albert Berkavicius from Sydney to Los Angeles. His primary purpose was to remove and replace an identified faulty ferrite core in the board he carried, which from memory had 256 of them. We were allowed to watch the procedure, the taking out and putting back of the 4 thin wires through the loops. It worked. This story helps to show the value then placed in the emerging beast called the computer.
Geoff S
Geoff ==> Yep, those are what our factory, Electronic Memories Inc, produced. 256 bit memory boards.
Rud: We must be about the same age. When I learned to program in FORTRAN the hard part was done with a pencil and paper – creating a detailed flow chart of the steps required to solve the problem. Once you had figured that out, writing the code the execute the steps was easy. It was then just a matter of compiling and running to obtain the error codes that would lead to discovery of typos and logic errors – aka “debugging”. Of course, each run meant submitting your deck of punch cards to the computing center and waiting sometimes hours to get the printout of results which were often something like “syntax error line 455”. Played a lot of Bridge with other CS students in break room while waiting.
My thesis card punch decks always used a big magic marker top X. Because they almost always never ran first time due to IBM CTL goofs, and almost always came back return sequence goofed. Ah, memories.
Early versions of that period, I think:
FORTRAN, or FORTRAN II D, or FORTRAN IV
Rud,
Ten out of ten. Your comments resonate strongly with my experiences. My intro to computing was to write a perpetual calendar in machine language. Others in the class did much better, so I made a decision right then to leave programming to those with a bent for it, to free up my time for thinking about solutions, including those responding to computing. Thanks. Geoff S
Rud, you are numerically challenged. IBM 340’s never had ferrite core memory.
.
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https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_sm/0/897/ENUS7012-340/index.html&breadCrum=DET001PT288&url=buttonpressed=DET001PT008&page=0&user+type=EXT&lang=en_US
Likely meant a 360 which was the machine of the 1960s. Definitely had core memory
I look forward to part 2. As I was reading part 1, before reaching the end, I thought about the claim I’ve often seen here that a global average temperature is a useless measure. Is it that the number itself is really useless? (What other way would we have to know if we are in a “global” warming or cooling trend and whether it is likely to be beneficial or catastrophic?) Or is it that the means of arriving at said number are dubious/suspect/insufficient? I hope to find some answers in part 2,
Think about it this way, reduce the question down to two different locations: what does it mean to average all the temperatures from Cut Bank, Montana with Rio de Janeiro?
A partial answer, IMO. GAST is meaningless. But the GAST anomaly is not (e.g. UAH anomaly). The problem with anomalies is that they hide the very large absolute divergence in IPCC climate modeled temperatures. See essay ‘Models all the way down’ in ebook Blowing Smoke for an illustrated and referenced example of this problem.
Climate is the entire temperature profile at a location. Every time you take an average you lose part of the data needed to evaluate the climate. In calculating the daily mid-range value you lose data about the temperature profile since multiple different minimum/maximum temps can give the same mid-range value, you have lost what happened in reality When you then find a monthly average using those averages you lose more data, different daily mid-range values can result in the same monthly average so how do you tell what is happening in reality. Then when you average monthly averages to get an annual average you lose even more data, you don’t know what happened in reality since different monthly averages can result in the same annual average value. Now average all those averages one more time on a global basis and while you come up with a number what does it actually mean in reality? There is no place on the globe you can find and measure that value. What does it actually tell you?
If you can’t measure it then does it really exist?
This doesn’t even get into propagating the uncertainties of the initial measurements through each average calculation.
The issue is that temperature is not a good indicator of heat. Enthalpy (energy content – SI unit Joules per kilogram) is the correct measure.
By illustration 40C and 20% humidity has an enthalpy of 550 J/kg. 32C and 80% humidity is 2080 J/kg so is actually much “hotter”.
Maybe Kip will address this in part 2
This is my biggest problem with atmospheric temperature measurements of any kind.
What we really need is a calculation of the total heat energy in the entire global climate system, ie the oceans and the atmosphere. To be absolutely correct, we should also include a certain amount of the ground too, since that is affected by the climate.
If we can get all that, accurate to 100th of a joule, on at least an hourly, and preferably per minute, basis, for the entire planet, I’ll start taking the numbers seriously.
gdt ==> You been reading my drafts?
You are quite correct: “temperature is not a good indicator of heat. Enthalpy (energy content – SI unit Joules per kilogram) is the correct measure.”
Pressure also figures into this. So temperatures taken at different elevations create different enthalpies as well. You very seldom see temperatures go up with a cold front passes through while pressure changes significantly.
I think a global average temperature is about as useful as the average of all the house numbers in my street. However I would be happy to be corrected.
I have no formal science of mathematical qualifications.
Excellent, Kip!
“the data” — is an oxymoron because the word is plural!
WUWT is a blog not a specialized scientific journal: “In modern non-scientific use, however, it is generally not treated as a plural. Instead, it is treated as a mass noun, similar to a word like information, which takes a singular verb. Sentences such as data was collected over a number of years are now widely accepted in standard English” (Oxford).
Chris ==> Love a good definition and love definitions that move with the times.
But it is probably not a wise move in that one has sacrificed a word (datum) and ended up with less precision by having to use one word to describe two sets — a set with one entry and sets with many entries. What advantage is provided by collapsing two similar words into a single word, other than not having to worry about verb-noun agreement? However, one can always decide not to worry about noun-verb agreement — if they don’t mind people viewing them as illiterate.
Clyde ==> Well, I would never write “a data”…..I might write “a data point….”
The trouble is that definitions change out of ignorance and misuse.
Still looks wrong from here, even if the Oxford eggheads hath decreed it not!
It is interesting to me how many ‘irregular’ (in the sense of based on Greek or Latin) singulars are disappearing from the language. You never see bacterium, larva, phenomenon any more, it is always bacteria, larvae, phenomena. I used to struggle against this trend, sad pedant that I am, but I wonder if it isn’t just the normal evolution of language, rather than a lowering of standards.
Why do you think “the” can’t be used with plurals?
Even if you did object to data being used as a singular, it wouldn’t make it an oxymoron, just bad grammar.
Does anyone understand the numbers that prompted the Biden donkey to declare that we have an EXISTENTIAL threat?
He even claims we can “feel the threat in our bones”, whatever that means?
Just watch this silly nonsense and fear for our future and ask yourself how we’ve fallen for this lunacy?
It’s the Twilight Zone.
Monte ==> “… you just crossed over into The Twilight Zone”
“Help me, Mr. Wizard!”
I’ve always had a problem of putting meaning behind temperature because without knowing the constituents of the temperature (what is the relative or absolute humidity, pressure and other particles), the number is not close to precisely anything of value! Further averaging this poorly defined number goes down the rabbit hole of “you lost me already”
Mario ==> Temperature is a measure of one thing and heat content or heat energy is a measure of not only a different thing but a different type of property.
Yes, that is correct. Delta temperature is used by many to “falsely” prove the earth is trapping energy. That is a slight of hand argument.
So I posit that measuring temperature without knowing the constituents of the air being measured is meaningless precisely because the amount of energy is not known simply by a temperature measurement without considering the other components I mentioned.
And I need to explain, when I wrote in my previous post “you lost me already” I was not referring to the author of this nice post. I was speaking generally to those others who don’t know the difference because heat and temperature.
Mario ==> We are now getting into the topic of Part 2…..
I figured that engineering units assigned to numbers would be a natural segway 🙂
With you so far, looking forward to part 2.
You do come across as a bit of a statistics-a-phobe.”All Models Are Wrong, Some are Useful” George Box, 1976. Fair (agenda-free) statistical analyses including summary statistics, empirical model-based summarisations, and theoretical model validations are an essential part of science. These all should consider appropriateness of the data, its measurement, measurement errors, and adequacy for the research question being addressed and all subsequent uses of the data should be closely scrutinised, peer reviewed (unfortunately a very fallible system), and subject to re-analysis (requiring all data and code to be freely available). Otherwise what is your alternative? The biggest hindrance is narrative-biased peer review. Fully transparent peer review would help.
Steven ==> I am a firm opponent of the mis-use of statistics to do data dredges to try and find something (anything) that might be claimed to be a publishable result. And other nonsensical practices — which are legion. Not really the topic here today.
I used to judge High School science fairs in Florida. All the teachers and advisors insisted every result include an ANOVA analysis — so every project did. NONE of the students, when I asked, had any idea wht ANOVA meant, what an ANOVA analysis did,etc. They just popped their results in a spreadsheet and pushed the ANOVA button……
Kip that’s fine but “we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater” as the saying goes. As a PhD-level applied statistician with over 40 years experience in statistical modelling/analysis mostly in forestry/fisheries/ecology I have seen many inappropriate to flat-out wrong analyses. A thing I get a lot of satisfaction out of is in helping collaborating subject-area researchers clarify and convert their research questions into valid and best-practice statistical models and inferences. cheers Steve
Steven ==> Don’t get me wrong, I am not an anti-statistics person.
“A thing I get a lot of satisfaction out of is in helping collaborating subject-area researchers clarify and convert their research questions into valid and best-practice statistical models and inferences.”
That is exactly what we need more of.
Mathematical analyses can be useful in supporting research work and formatting data into easily visible summaries. However what we are seeing currently is that the mathematical analysis IS the research work and actual data is becoming more and more irrelevant. It’s a disturbing trend.
Somebody (Roman M, I think) pointed out at Climate Audit ages ago that there actually is a statistically correct way to handle significance in such data mining analyses.
Re: the students pushing the ANOVA button. Easily accessible powerful statistical analysis programs* allow people with no conceptual grasp of the area to throw numbers into the machine and produce something. They then think that particular something is important because it’s statistics and the computer said so 🙁
[*] it’s rather a stretch to include ANOVA here, but it’s the concept, not the detail…
Kip,
Looking forward to your next part, which might be numbered 2.
We are all shaped by a past life of selecting what we like and we’re taught and sometimes disagreeing with others.
I was taught that in Earth Sciences at least, a derived number is incomplete unless it has another number expressing its uncertainty. Not all agree. I have been trying for 6 years to get our BOM to disclose the uncertainty that they place on routine daily temperature measurements. Still not there, have some of their estimates for instrumental but not yet including the setting, like screen errors.
Without proper uncertainties, one cannot claim a temperature as a record because it might be just random noise. This goes straight to your comments about numbers measuring something but not being that something.
Let’s push for more uncertainty estimates, done by the book. Geoff S
Geoff, don’t you realize that climatologists have to take the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath — “First, do no harm.” It is called the Hypocrite Oath and is — “First, never admit uncertainty.”
Geoff ==> I think you know that I have been demanding uncertainty, particularly Original Measurement Uncertainty be accounted for and shown — and an end to the idiocy that Original Measuremen Uncertainty can be “averaged away”.
I agree. Plus the use of SEM as uncertainty is totally wrong. SEM is statistical error not measurement uncertainty. In other words it tells you how closely the sample mean estimates the population mean, it tells you nothing of measurement uncertainty.
Most metrology teaches that if you have a small number of samples, like 10 experiments, the uncertainty is best expressed by Standard Deviation of the 10 experiments. This is actually the Standard Deviation of sample Means (SEM). You can’t divide the SEM by the √N because you get a worthless number.
And for temperature, you get exactly one chance for the measurement, then it is gone forever. √N = 1.
“You can’t divide the SEM by the √N because you get a worthless number.”
Why would you want to divide SEM by √N? You divide the standard deviation by √N to get the SEM.
“Most metrology teaches that if you have a small number of samples, like 10 experiments, the uncertainty is best expressed by Standard Deviation of the 10 experiments.”
What do you mean by “experiments” in this case?
Experiments can be anything. Samples of a production run, a chemical reaction, you name it.
How many folks on here have said that to find the uncertainty of the Global Average Temperature, you divide the Standard Deviation by the √N? Besides that not being uncertainty you are dealing with samples. Every daily average is of samples. Every monthly average is of samples. Every annual average is of samples. That is all there is — Samples. You can’t divide by √10,000 stations and get a number that means anything.
Kip Hansen has started a series on numbers. I suggest you go there and begin to learn what you don’t know about metrology.
But there’s a difference between an experiment that is taking just one value, and an experiment that results in a sample of values.
“How many folks on here have said that to find the uncertainty of the Global Average Temperature, you divide the Standard Deviation by the √N?”
Nobody as far as I’m aware. I’ve always said that the uncertainty of a global average is a complicated process. All I’ve said is that is the standard way to calculate the SEM and the SEM is a measure of the uncertainty of the mean, with a lot of caveats.
“Kip Hansen has started a series on numbers.”
Thanks, but based on his comments I’m not sure he understands averaging better than you.
Wake up. Read studies and see what they do.
The NIH has even recognized the problem.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2959222/#
“” However, many authors incorrectly use SEM as a descriptive statistics to sumthemarize the variability in their data because it is less than the SD, implying incorrectly that their measurements are more precise.””
You keep linking this.
Yes SEM is not a descriptive statistic, it’s inferential. If you use the SEM and imply it’s the SD you are wrong. If you use the SD when you use mean the SEM you are wrong. And none of this means, you estimate the uncertainty of a global anomaly average simply by dividing the SD by √N.
Yes, Kip,
I know that you have pressed for better uncertainty analysis from the beginning. I did not mean to infer that you were lax, I simply accepted that both you and I and most readers knew it.
Geoff S
You can use temperature to estimate the energy level of a known substance when the volume & pressure remains the same (see its “Specific heat capacity”). BUT …
So averaging temperatures is not a measurement of energy when volume, pressure and/or composition varies per locations & over time as occurs in meteorology (then aggregated over time as climatology).
trgrus ==> Absolutely — “temperature is not a measurement of energy” thus cannot be added and averaged…..
We can distill the dissertation.
“Lies, Damn Lies and statistics”
Excellent post.
“like Global Average Surface Temperature, an entirely imaginary nonphysical number.” In principal a Global Average Surface Temperature based on a census of every defined surface unit and time interval, to be theoretical in the extreme lets say every m^2 and every sec, and then averaged over all are units in space and over a contiguous set of time units (say a year) is a valid statistic of a valid measurement (say instrumental) that approximates a physical reality. The problem is not in the theory but in the historical sampling realisations of the population of census values. Dealing with highly unbalanced sampling over space and time, time trend analysis of means, the uncertainty of the time trend, attempting to adjust for temporal and/or spatial confounders this is my effort in modelling an analogous set of very unbalanced data for long-term trend in the mean and its uncertainty (https://journalarrb.com/index.php/ARRB/article/view/30460)
Steven ==> Your hypothetical produces a number, but still of a non-physical abstract., something with no meaning in the sense of physics. I hope to explain why in Part 2.
Steven ==> It is a problem of “What Exactly Are They Really Counting” — they are counting local degress of temperature — and they should be counting HEAT content. Heat is an extensible property of physical matter, while temperature is an intensive property. That is the physics of it…..
Kip, so here in southern Tasmania when the maximum daily air temperature can be about 10degC this time of year, if I was a poikilotherm (like those Tasmanian’s to be wary of – the tiger snake) I would curl up on a rock in the sun and not do much else. So air temperature and internal body temperature have a strong relationship with obviously body heat content functionally dependent on air temperature (with some insolation warming of the rock I am curled up on) not the other way around. I modelled coleopteran development in my PhD (a poikilothermic order) and a thermal sum with a lower temperature threshold is very well established as an excellent predictor of insect development through immature stages (larval instars). “they should be counting HEAT content” Good luck with that. I wouldnt have been able to do my PhD if I had to put tiny-weeny temperature probes in all those thousands of gum leaf beetles and weigh each one individually to estimate their heat content. Have you ever done any field based research?
I forget to mention the insolation warming of the black tiger snake itself. One contemporary PhD I communicated with did glue small temperature probes on the underside of the abdomen of a few gum leaf beetles to estimate the additional effect of insolation but a probe inside the beetle would have been ideal but then again they like us would have found it difficult to go about their business happily with a metal spike up their rear end! :-}
Steven ==> I was a herpts guy when I was a kid. Not quite getting your point — your snake curls on on a warm rock in the Sun to warm up….the air temperature being too low to allow him to do that — so he absorbs the radiant heat (and secondarily, the radiant heat absorbed by the hot rock) to accomplish that.
Quite clearly, you used “thermometer temperature” (sensible heat) as a quick-and-easy measure of the heat contained in and provided by these objects (snake body and rock).
Yes?
“scientific philosophy of numbers “
..
No such thing Kip. Posting a word salad is dumb
And, I don’t think much of your Caesar salad — even with bacon.