Posted on 01/11/2018 8:13:14 AM PST by SeekAndFind
We all learned in elementary school that "you can't divide by zero." But what happens when you divide by a number very close to zero, a small fraction? The quotient shoots way up to a very large value.
Pick any number. If you divide 27 by 1, you get 27. If you divide 27 by 0.1, you get 270. Divide 27 by 0.001, and you get 27,000. And so on. Any such division exercise blows up to a huge result as the denominator gets closer and closer to zero.
There are several indices being cited these days that get people's attention because of the big numbers displayed. But the reality is that those particular big numbers come entirely from having very small denominators when calculating a ratio. Three prominent examples of this mathematical artifact are the feedback effect in global warming models, the "Global Warming Potential," and the "Happy Planet Index." Each of these is afflicted by the enormous distortion that results when a denominator is small.
The Happy Planet Index
The "Happy Planet Index" is the easiest to explain. It is used to compare different countries and is formed by the combination of
(a x b x c) / d.
In this equation,
a = well-being – "how satisfied the residents of each country feel with life overall" (based on a Gallup poll)
b = life expectancy
c = inequalities of outcomes ("the inequalities between people within a country in terms of how long they live, and how happy they feel, based on the distribution in each country's life expectancy and well-being data")
d = ecological footprint ("the average impact that each resident of a country places on the environment, based on data prepared by the Global Footprint Network")
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I've been there quite a lot over the years. Top score if one lives in a gated community. Outside that protection, not so much. Federales are pretty tough outside the city. Lovely plants, almost alien in appearance and some of the best fruit on the planet.
Using subjective numbers and bad math as a political weapon.
Certainly there is no science here.
Wow, based on the happiness index (US being red and Mexico being green), people should be fleeing the US toward Mexico in search of happiness.
Mark Twain said there are 3 types of lies:
1) Lies
2) Damnable Lies
3) Statistics
But now there is a new category:
4) Liberal Talking Points.
I love that article. It lays out the model math tricks and details the junk in junk out BS that is the AGW models and predictions.
They don’t just meddle with the actually input data (temperatures and such). They tinker with the math so that formulas will exaggerate the interpreted data. And “interpreted” is a key word there.
This proves there is very little science actually involved in the AWG fanaticism.
Can you eat the fruit and drink the water?
Never had a problem with either.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3621509/posts
See
1 Dead, 800 Injured as 3.5 Million Catholics Follow Blackened Jesus Statue With ‘Miraculous Powers’
for a current example.
There is more to statistics than trying to stuff all data into a Gaussian distribution. The key is Skewness and Kurtosis. Climate models tend to neglect these finer points.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/01/05/kurtosis-mpemba-temperature-and-history/
https://brownmath.com/stat/shape.htm
Lying with statistics.
In one of my college courses (many years ago) a professor gave the example of a race between a Russian car and a U.S. car. The U.S. car won. Russian news said, “Russian car came in second. U.S. car came in next to last.”
The originator of that example deserves a job at CNN. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.