27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Successful Prediction
Successful prediction is the revenge of the nerds. Superforecasters are intelligent but not necessarily brilliant, falling just in the top fifth of the population. They are highly numerate, not in the sense of being math whizzes but in the sense of comfortably thinking in guesstimates. They have personality traits that psychologists call “openness to experience” (intellectual curiosity and a taste for variety), “need for cognition” (pleasure taken in intellectual activity), and “int...Folksonomies: statistics prediction
Folksonomies: statistics prediction
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notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Von Neuman and Predicting the Weather
I remember a talk that Von Neumann gave at Princeton around 1950, describing the glorious future which he then saw for his computers. Most of the people that he hired for his computer project in the early days were meteorologists. Meteorology was the big thing on his horizon. He said, as soon as we have good computers, we shall be able to divide the phenomena of meteorology cleanly into two categories, the stable and the unstable. The unstable phenomena are those which are upset by small dist...Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
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notes22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
With the Seed We May Deduce the Animal
If we possessed a thorough knowledge of all the parts of the seed of any animal (e.g. man), we could from that alone, by reasons entirely mathematical and certain, deduce the whole conformation and figure of each of its members, and, conversely if we knew several peculiarities of this conformation, we would from those deduce the nature of its seed. 1 notes
notesInteresting idea, if wrong for not understanding how environment affects growth, but the idea that we could one day take a seed and predict the full-grown organism that will result from it is intriguing.
21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Common Sense Does Not Predict
Common sense ... has the very curious property of being more correct retrospectively than prospectively. It seems to me that one of the principal criteria to be applied to successful science is that its results are almost always obvious retrospectively; unfortunately, they seldom are prospectively. Common sense provides a kind of ultimate validation after science has completed its work; it seldom anticipates what science is going to discover. 1 notes
notesScience predicts, common sense comes along afterwards.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Origin of Chaos Theory
Lorenz and his team were working to develop a weather forecasting program on an early computer known as a Royal McBee LGP-30.21 They thought they were getting somewhere until the computer started spitting out erratic results. They began with what they thought was exactly the same data and ran what they thought was exactly the same code—but the program would forecast clear skies over Kansas in one run, and a thunderstorm in the next.
After spending weeks double-checking their hardware and t...Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
1 Weather modeling produced two widely different results when a few thousandths of a decimal point went missing.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Autism as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Diseases and other medical conditions can also have this self-fulfilling property. When medical conditions are widely discussed in the media, people are more likely to identify their symptoms, and doctors are more likely to diagnose (or misdiagnose) them. The best-known case of this in recent years is autism. If you compare the number of children who are diagnosed as autistic64 to the frequency with which the term autism has been used in American newspapers,65 you’ll find that there is an a... 1 notes
notesAs the illness gets more attention, more people are diagnosed with it.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Prediction VS Forecast
The official position of the USGS is even more emphatic: earthquakes cannot be predicted. “Neither the USGS nor Caltech nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake,” the organization’s Web site asserts.24 “They do not know how, and they do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future.”
Earthquakes cannot be predicted? This is a book about prediction, not a book that makes predictions, but I’m willing to stick my neck out: I predict that there will... 1 notes
notesOne is a definitive statement, the other a probabilistic one.
12 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Laplace's Demon
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain an...Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
Folksonomies: prediction chaos theory
1 notes
notesIf an intellect could know all the positions and motions of the Universe at one point could predict the future.
31 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Predictions of the Future are "Laughably Conservative"
If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run—and often in the short one—the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. Folksonomies: prescience prediction
Folksonomies: prescience prediction
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notesNot always true, but a nice sentiment.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Evolutionary Theory Prediction Comes True in Walking Fish
This is where the prediction comes in. If there were lobe-finned fishes
but no terrestrial vertebrates 390 million years ago, and clearly terrestrial vertebrates 360 million years ago, where would you expect to find the
transitional forms? Somewhere in between. Following this logic, Shubin
predicted that if transitional forms existed, their fossils would be found
in strata around 375 million years old. Moreover, the rocks would have
to be from freshwater rather than marine sediments, because ...Folksonomies: evolution prediction
Folksonomies: evolution prediction
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notesTiktaalik was discovered right where evolution predicted it should exist, with traits that brought it closer to land without making it onto land, creating another fossil prediction for the future.
