I read in a book somewhere that NOAA has the most accurate weather data, and that all other for-profit companies are just piggybacking off their data, but the companies fudge with the numbers a bit so people are less mad in some situations.
For example if there’s a 10% chance of rain per NOAA, a company might report there’s a 40% chance of rain, so you’re less mad and more understanding “we’ll it was 40%” vs “wtf you call this 10% chance?”
Recently, they made their own weather app, for free and without ads, even open-source (repo). A few of the big commercial weather providers (that just regurgitates KNMI’s data) were mad that this app was better than their shitty ad-riddled version, so they sued them (and lost).
We had a similar thing happen in the US but the private corporations won, and for some reason now they get to charge you money to access free government weather data that the government only gives to corporations but not normal people.
I just remember someone trying to explain in past probably on Lemmy, how the percentage is just a part of a area, not like 40% across the whole map just 40% chance it might rain in this one spot or something like that
I read in a book somewhere that NOAA has the most accurate weather data, and that all other for-profit companies are just piggybacking off their data, but the companies fudge with the numbers a bit so people are less mad in some situations.
For example if there’s a 10% chance of rain per NOAA, a company might report there’s a 40% chance of rain, so you’re less mad and more understanding “we’ll it was 40%” vs “wtf you call this 10% chance?”
Just felt like telling that little anecdote.
In the Netherlands we have the KNMI.
Recently, they made their own weather app, for free and without ads, even open-source (repo). A few of the big commercial weather providers (that just regurgitates KNMI’s data) were mad that this app was better than their shitty ad-riddled version, so they sued them (and lost).
We had a similar thing happen in the US but the private corporations won, and for some reason now they get to charge you money to access free government weather data that the government only gives to corporations but not normal people.
all this tells me that people to date still don’t understand percentages and probability.
I just remember someone trying to explain in past probably on Lemmy, how the percentage is just a part of a area, not like 40% across the whole map just 40% chance it might rain in this one spot or something like that
What are the chances of that?
Are you surprised?
They should just commit and say 50%. At the level of intellect, it either rains or it doesn’t.