Conversations

recent posts

about

Professionally, I’m a retired professor of accounting and former chair of the School of Accounting at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. My academic work explored how people make decisions in complex systems, especially when information is imperfect or overwhelming. I’ve published in a fair number of journals that few people read voluntarily, and I spent decades thinking about how technology shapes human behavior. These days, my time is divided between managing a small flock of chickens, herding goats, chatting on amateur radio (KO4LMP), and living just on the edge of the grid—literally and metaphorically. I’m a father to five daughters, a grandfather to 17, and a great-grandfather to three. Somewhere along the way, I realized that what I enjoy most is simply talking about the world we live in—and how to make sense of it.

🌧️Is This Really a Weather Forecast?

I’m just having a devil of a time wrapping my head around a 75% chance of getting 1/20 of an inch of rain. Help me please!

ChatGPT said:

The trick is that 75% and 0.05 inch are answering two completely different questions. And weather apps don’t make that distinction especially intuitive.

Your screenshot is saying:

75% = How likely is it that you get measurable rain at some point today?
0.05″ = If you add up the rain expected over the next 24 hours, roughly how much is forecast?

So, the forecast is essentially: “We’re fairly confident you’ll get wet, but we’re also fairly confident you won’t get very wet.”

Think of a brief shower. Suppose a shower passes over your farm at noon and drops 0.05 inch in 15–20 minutes. That’s only about 1/20 inch—barely enough to settle the dust and wet everything down. Yet it absolutely counts as a rainy event.

Note: ChatGPT continues for another page or two, blah, blah, blah…

I cannot even measure 1/20 of an inch. This apparently makes more sense to a machine than it does to a human.

ChatGPT said:

The computer has no trouble saying “0.05 inch” because its weather model produces a numerical estimate.

Note: ChatGPT continues for another page or two, blah, blah, blah…

You’re the machine I was talking about.

ChatGPT said:

Touché. 😄

Posted in

Leave a Reply