On 8/14/2013 2:17 AM, scott wrote:
>> Which is, as unfortunate as it is idiotic. WHO determines its actions
>> based on the statistical odds that something bad is likely to happen.
>> The math told them, "There is a bloody high probability that this mix of
>> genes could prove to be a serious problem, if it became wide spread."
>> Turned out not to be accurate. But, the average person always seems to
>> assume that the "experts" are omniscient.
>
> I know people who think the experts are wrong every time they predict
> 20% chance of rain and it doesn't rain. It also doesn't help when
> journalists publicise their incorrect analysis of statistics as if they
> were fact.
>
Much of this is intentional, like.. if its a 50% chance, always report 
it as 60%, instead, so that, when it isn't true, the public has an 
"unexpected" good day.

>> the case of, for example, Katrina, you had some "expert" claiming that
>> the sea level rise was "within" acceptable statistical ranges, with
>> respect to spilling over the levees, and they actually **lied**,
>> claiming that the maximum level was a few feet under the max levee
>> height, without including the "statistical" factor, that it might be
>> something like 10 feet higher or lower than that.
>
> IIRC sea/wave heights are characterised by how often you would expect
> (in a statistical sense) to see a particular height. eg above 10 metres
> would be once in 10 years, above 15 metres once in 100 years etc.
> Obviously if you design your structure to cope with 15 metres that
> doesn't mean you won't see a 16 metre wave tomorrow and it will be
> destroyed, but many people seem to think this way, and the journalist
> would write that the engineer was incompetent as the structure should
> have lasted at least 100 years.

Except, that isn't what actually happened. I don't remember the actual 
numbers, but, roughly, it was like this:

Levee height - 45 feet.
Expected "average" water height - 36 feet.
**Known** variation, during storms - +-15 feet

Again, not the exact numbers. However, it was **not** the press that 
reported it as 46 feet "maximum", it was the climatologist **on sight**, 
who told the mayor that it would *only* reach 46 feet, when, in reality, 
the actually level could have been, based on the known storm surge data, 
which he flat out ignored, between 32 feet, and 51 feet, a *huge* range 
of error, which only becomes a problem if the storm "surges" to the 
higher end of the probable numbers.

This is a bit like playing Russian roulette, your "odds" might be 5 in 6 
of not getting the bullet, but.. if you do, then it doesn't bloody 
matter, at all, what the odds where, at that point of "not" getting it. 
Yeah, there might have been, say, a 10% chance if the storm surging 
enough to make it over 45 feet, and a, say, 90% change that it would be 
"much" lower, but, it doesn't mean jack all if you are wrong, and jumps 
over into the 10% range of things that, "Probably won't happen."

The actual, supposed, scientist, himself, simply ignored the odds of 
being wrong, and reported, "I see no reason to believe, at all, that it 
will rise higher than the 'average'."

A book I read a while back stated that this was a bit like a common joke 
among statisticians: A statistician drowned in a river. The river had an 
'average' yearly depth of only 0.5 inches." The point of the joke being 
that the river might be dead dry 3 weeks out of the year, and 50 feet 
deep, in a flash flood, during the middle of the rainy season, but the 
"average" is only 0.5 inches. The moron that told the mayor his "expert" 
opinion used the "average", and totally failed to mention what the 
"maximum" might end up being. By the time *someone else* got around to 
pointing out this was dangerously wrong, there where hours, instead of 
days, to try to evacuate anyone.

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