Just so, Dan! My Dad told of an eccentric experimenter at U of W Madison, probably around 1950. He bought a lot of rain gauges and set them out in an array in a hillside meadow. After a storm, the measured amount of rain was all over the place — essentially random! It probably wasn’t published, because later an electrical short set fire to his camper/laboratory and everything burned up. — Mike B
On Jun 15, 2020, at 6:41 PM, Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
You're right, there can be no precise definition of probability for real-world events.
But in practice this means that among situations on record having approximately the same parameters as the current one, about 30% of them have resulted in (greater-than-threshold) rain (during the period in question).
—Dan
----- On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 4:48 PM Brent Meeker via math-fun < math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
The ambiguity that most often bothers me is announcements of the form, "Thirty per cent chance of rain today." I know rain is defined as a measure greater than 0.1" But what does the 30% mean? Does it mean there will be at least 0.1" of rain on 30% of the people within range of the radio station? Or does it mean that if you hear this a hundred times, all the people in range will experience rain 30 times?
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