Groundhog Day's Spring Predictions No Better Than Chance (nationalgeographic.com) 85
A lighthearted study of spring flowers' blooming times confirms that groundhog soothsaying is essentially a cute, furry coin flip. From a report: The idea behind Groundhog Day is as simple as it is eccentric. Every February 2 -- the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox -- a bleary-eyed groundhog is hoisted from its burrow into the daylight in towns across the United States and Canada. If its human handler proclaims that the rodent sees its shadow (as Punxsutawney Phil did this year), then six more weeks of winter await; if it doesn't, spring will come early -- or so the tradition goes. Each year, the date's approach is met with gleeful anticipation and sometimes a rewatching of the movie that made the day globally famous. Each year, the groundhogs' "proclamations" are reported with mock seriousness. The occasional tongue-in-cheek assertion to the contrary -- for example, General Beauregard Lee from Jackson, Georgia, self-reports an accuracy rate of 99 percent -- few would make the case for groundhog divination as a substitute for long-range meteorology.
To verify whether groundhogs might be weather soothsayers, a team of researchers from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, decided to take a cold, hard look at the evidence. It was, admits lead author Alex Ross, a project that was born in the campus bar ("There were many conversations over many beers," he confesses to National Geographic), and given extra impetus by the boredom of a pandemic. But the result, which appeared in the journal Weather, Climate, and Society, is unquestionably the most comprehensive statistical analysis yet published of the accuracy of groundhog predictive abilities.
[...] Not all groundhogs had equal forecasting powers. Punxsutawney Phil's predictions were correct 52 times out of 100, while three mascots -- Essex Ed from Essex, Connecticut; Chuckles from Manchester, Connecticut; and Stonewall Jackson from Wantage, New Jersey -- scored correctly more than 70 percent of the time. Conversely, Buckeye Chuck from Marion, Ohio; Dunkirk Dave (Dunkirk, New York); and Holland Huckleberry (Holland, Ohio) each had a less than 30 percent success rate. Punxsutawney Phil and Ontario's Wiarton Willie were the only groundhogs with more than 50 years of predictions on record. Of the newcomers, the worst performer was probably Winnipeg Willow, who made only four predictions, was wrong on three of them, and predicted a late spring in a year when it arrived 38 days earlier than average. "Even if certain groundhogs can occasionally predict the onset of spring better than others," the authors write, "there appears to be no clear prophet among the group evaluated here."
To verify whether groundhogs might be weather soothsayers, a team of researchers from Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada, decided to take a cold, hard look at the evidence. It was, admits lead author Alex Ross, a project that was born in the campus bar ("There were many conversations over many beers," he confesses to National Geographic), and given extra impetus by the boredom of a pandemic. But the result, which appeared in the journal Weather, Climate, and Society, is unquestionably the most comprehensive statistical analysis yet published of the accuracy of groundhog predictive abilities.
[...] Not all groundhogs had equal forecasting powers. Punxsutawney Phil's predictions were correct 52 times out of 100, while three mascots -- Essex Ed from Essex, Connecticut; Chuckles from Manchester, Connecticut; and Stonewall Jackson from Wantage, New Jersey -- scored correctly more than 70 percent of the time. Conversely, Buckeye Chuck from Marion, Ohio; Dunkirk Dave (Dunkirk, New York); and Holland Huckleberry (Holland, Ohio) each had a less than 30 percent success rate. Punxsutawney Phil and Ontario's Wiarton Willie were the only groundhogs with more than 50 years of predictions on record. Of the newcomers, the worst performer was probably Winnipeg Willow, who made only four predictions, was wrong on three of them, and predicted a late spring in a year when it arrived 38 days earlier than average. "Even if certain groundhogs can occasionally predict the onset of spring better than others," the authors write, "there appears to be no clear prophet among the group evaluated here."
Ritualistic Bullshit. (Score:1)
Sounds familiar.
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Harmless entertainment if you know you cannot put any trust in the results. Quite dangerous otherwise. But people that cannot clearly distinguish fantasy and reality are already quite dangerous.
So, in the movie... (Score:2)
I've seen some guesses in the hundreds or more years based on all the skills he learned (playing the piano, etc) one day at a time.
Anyone know if there is a definitive number?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, in the movie... (Score:5, Informative)
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Do note though that he's waivered a bit in that estimate. He later suggested 30 to 40 years, and an in earlier draft of the script Phil himself estimated that he'd been looping for 70 to 80 years.
I always had the impression that he'd been going for much, much longer than that. Thousands of years or even more. He basically was replaying the day until every single possible detail was perfect.
It would have been funny though if at the end of the movie it turned out that when he finally made it to the "next"
Re:So, in the movie... (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you say that he spent more than a lifetime in the loop then you're saying he was actually irredeemable.
I don't believe that follows. Regardless of the amount of time he had to spend in his purgatory, at the end of the movie, he was unequivocally redeemed--despite the monotony of his life over however long a period of time, despite his undeniable cynicism and self-centeredness at the start of the movie, at the end, the things he did were legitimately for others, and he truly enjoyed doing those things.
Unlike similar movies in the genre (such as it is) that came in later years (where the protagonists may try
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Huh... I always figured the actual freedom condition was for him to sleep with his co-worker.
He didn't actually sleep with her, though (if by "sleep" you mean "sex").
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I mean... I thought it was heavily implied. I mean it didn't outright show more than them waking up in the same bed.
Not implied, and explicitly disclaimed [youtube.com]. When he kisses her excitedly after realizing the day has changed, she asks him "why weren't you like this last night, you just went to sleep?"
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If you assume 5000h to really master anything, you end up at something like at least several decades.
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I believe the figure is 10,000 hours - and that's 10K hours of purposeful practice.
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I believe the figure is 10,000 hours - and that's 10K hours of purposeful practice.
It varies. 5k hours is definitely a lower estimate though.
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There are no definite numbers on how long he was trapped in a loop. A study based on the skills he was showing at the end of the movie predicted 38 years.
There was also a set of production notes that said he was in that loop for 10,000 years.
Now then, over the course of the movie we only saw about 6 months of his days in the loop, and those days where tame. What I want to see is the days when Bill really lost his shit. Decades or millenniums living the same day over and over, you know at some tim
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I don't understand what you mean by this. When the loop ended it transitioned smoothly in to the next day. Unless I'm missing something there would be no sudden shift in the stars no matter how far out the effect was.
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Sure, why not? We are talking about a guy in a time loop, in a thread about a weather predicting rodent.
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what is? a guy in a time loop, or a weather predicting rat?
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what is? a guy in a time loop, or a weather predicting rat?
Yes
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Being stuck in a time loop is vaguely interesting and makes for a decent plot device. I never under stood the weather predicting rat. Is it based on some kind of fokelore or did someone rube make it up on the spot?
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It's a de-paganized version of the story where the winter crone gathers her firewood for the rest of winter on that day. If she needs a lot of firewood (implying a long winter) she makes it a bright sunny day so she can find plenty.
he got DUI and drove on the railroad tracks (Score:2)
he got DUI and drove on the railroad tracks
did suicide a few times.
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We might have an official response to this now.
https://www.audacy.com/music/e... [audacy.com]
What purpose does this serve? (Score:4, Funny)
Other than to assert to the world that we're all crazy. Just in case they somehow forgot.
Blasphemer! (Score:2)
Ignore this fool and this clearly fake article! The wise and oft-replaced Punxsutawney Phil is the truthteller of our weather! "But satellite information," you cry. Punxsutawney Phil's vision of the future is beyond that of mere technology! You unbelievers are going to get us six more weeks of winter!
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To add some additional excitement to the dreary winter months.
Christmas and New Years is early Winter, where the snow and cold are novel and fun.
Easter will tend to happen in Spring where usually the snow is gone, and things are starting to grow.
The rest of winter we get a set of Lame semi-holidays Groundhog day, Valentines Day, St. Patric's day. Mostly just as some sort of reason to make life tolerable in a dark snowy wasteland.
Granted most of the US popular holidays are North Eastern US based. Where you
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I didn't hear any results from... (Score:1)
Woodstock Willy! - Woodstock, IL being where the movie was filmed. Willy being the large rodent used for prognostication. BTW - No shadow this year - spring will be early.
All of that being said... someone needs to nominate these boffins for an Ig Nobel. They came up with the idea, did the research, crunched the numbers, and published the paper.
Duh? (Score:5, Informative)
Gimme my pony BEFORE you ruin everything (Score:2)
Next you are going to tell me Santa and the Easter Bunny are fake?!
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Every age has its 'free stuff' fantasies [i.redd.it]. Most people eventually grow up.
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Now that machines do most the real work, the dream is actually possible, but troglodytes don't want to even try.
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Now that machines do most the real work, the dream is actually possible, but troglodytes don't want to even try.
Only complete retards think that ANYTHING is mostly made by the work of machines. So sick of you brain-dead fucks who just won't give up on the false promises of Communism.
The giant irony is, of course, that the additional costs to most goods is a direct result of the policies put in place by the left. (And just for the record, I'm quite fine with better environmental protections, worker safety, etc), but they do have a MEASURABLE impact on the costs of finished goods. This is often the prime factor in w
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The BOM on an iPhone is somewhere around $300. That includes the rare earth miners, the refinement, truck drivers, etc. The workers are paid next to nothing by U.S. standards and much of the work is done by machines. Do you really think each component is lovingly hand soldered and then placed in an individually hand carved shell by monks? The rest of the retail price is from this side of the ocean.
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Do you really think each component is lovingly hand soldered and then placed in an individually hand carved shell by monks?
No. I don't, smart-ass. You, however, appear to think that human labor doesn't play a factor if you're arguing against my point.
Plastics have to be produced. Metal has to be mined. Screws have to be fabricated. Chips have to be made.. Raw materials have to be obtained, refined, and transported. And while machines may do a lot of the work, those fucking iphones are ASSEMBLED by hand.
Then we get to the giant container ships that transport the goods. Crane operators to unload the ships. Truck drivers to
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Plastics have to be produced. Metal has to be mined. Screws have to be fabricated. Chips have to be made.. Raw materials have to be obtained, refined, and transported.
You didn't read very carefully. That labor is 100% covered within the $300 BOM.
Much of the work is done by machines. Not enough to have free stuff, but enough for it to be a hell of a lot less expensive than it currently is. Especially when the bulk of that labor makes $2 or $3 dollars a day.
If we had real competition in the market as envisioned by Smith, Apple (and many others) wouldn't stand a chance of marking things up as much as they do.
BTW, I did buy an Android. It was still too expensive but not as i
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You didn't read very carefully. That labor is 100% covered within the $300 BOM.
Much of the work is done by machines. Not enough to have free stuff, but enough for it to be a hell of a lot less expensive than it currently is. Especially when the bulk of that labor makes $2 or $3 dollars a day.
If we had real competition in the market as envisioned by Smith, Apple (and many others) wouldn't stand a chance of marking things up as much as they do.
BTW, I did buy an Android. It was still too expensive but not as insanely so as an iPhone.
I'm not understanding your point. What is the argument you are trying to make regarding the iPhone? You don't like the price that Apple sells it for? You think it's unfair? What is it?
They don't have a monopoly on smart-phones. For every iPhone sold nine Androids are sold. AFAIK, the only place Apple dominates the market is the US. World-wide they are barely a blip on the radar (10% of the market).
So, enlighten me to what the problem is.
I paid $120 for a Motorola Moto Fast G. It runs great. That
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That in an actual healthy market, it would be *IMPOSSIBLE* for Apple to sell a phone for that much and remain in business. There are many such products. That's because the markets are mostly broken.
This should concern you if you are a fan of Capitalism. Because there's nothing like a long list of failures to convince people they should try something else, such as Socialism. Whether or not Socialism is going to work is irrelevant to the question, it'e where we'll go if our Capitalist market economy doesn't g
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That in an actual healthy market, it would be *IMPOSSIBLE* for Apple to sell a phone for that much and remain in business.
BULLSHIT. It is a healthy market. I've proven that. You can buy a smart-phone that operates VERY WELL, for $120. You can spend way less if you're okay with a phone being "slower".
You just ignore the fucking Lamborghini example? That supposed to be impossible to do as well?
Apple used marketing to convince people that the iPhone is a STATUS SYMBOL. Androids are for peasants and iPhones are for the smart/beautiful crowd.
That's precisely how marketing works. And there is nothing immoral about it.
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I made no claims of immorality, that's your own projection. I'm talking about market health. I note that you have now changed your argument to the point that it no longer resembles your original argument. That is, you claimed the high cost was driven by labor costs. I see you no longer wish to make that claim.
As for your claims for an Android phone, the only thing under $200 I saw was old stock on firesale because it only supports 3G which is being phased out.
As a side note, 'status symbols' that are expens
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I made no claims of immorality, that's your own projection. I'm talking about market health. I note that you have now changed your argument to the point that it no longer resembles your original argument. That is, you claimed the high cost was driven by labor costs. I see you no longer wish to make that claim.
Bullshit. I claimed LABOR costs prevented phones from being "almost free". You're the cunt who changed to "high prices should never happen in a healthy market". I quote YOU "That in an actual healthy market, it would be *IMPOSSIBLE* for Apple to sell a phone for that much and remain in business."
So, we've arrived at "You're a fucking liar".
As for your claims for an Android phone, the only thing under $200 I saw was old stock on firesale because it only supports 3G which is being phased out.
Tracfone Motorola Moto G Power 4G LTE [amazon.com] - $70 and it's 4G
You're either a liar, incompetent, or retarded. Which is it?
As a side note, 'status symbols' that are expensive because they are expensive due to marketing is brokenness in the market.
Bullshit. I despise lairs and socialist cunts. Th
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From the phone you pointed out:
Note: This phone is carrier locked; Customers must have had their locked device activated on service for no fewer than 12 months, redeemed air time cards in no fewer than 12 months, and not have had their telephone number recycled or ported.Rear Camera
That's one of those pay me now or pay me (more) later situations.
My argument is that in a healthy market, MARK-UPS couldn't be that high. That doesn't mean that nothing could be expensive, some things cost a lot to make and some services cost a lot to provide. It's just that with the widespread problems with broken markets a great many things cost more than they should. REALLY, (re)read "The Wealth of Nations".
BTW, I too could spew ad-hominems , but I choose not to because I h
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If we had real competition in the market as envisioned by Smith, Apple (and many others) wouldn't stand a chance of marking things up as much as they do.
Absolute BULLSHIT. Pure, undiluted bullshit.
Apple isn't charging the price it charges because of a lack of fucking competition. How the hell can you be that naive? Apple charges the price it charges because they have marketed the iPhone to the point where it's become a status-symbol. iPhone users are more "classy" than those of us using the phone made for peasants (Android).
Seriously. How the fuck do you not get that? Anyone can buy a very decent Android based phone for around $100.
You think Lamb
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> Only complete retards think that ANYTHING is mostly made by the work of machines.
Many manufactures say it's quite possible, but fashion trends and fads make them have to change too often. If the target stays still, it can be readily automated. We just have to tell the Kardashians to F off.
> The giant irony is, of course, that the additional costs to most goods is a direct result of the policies put in place by the left.
Example? (Other than permitting pollution and de-facto slavery.)
> You think al
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> Only complete retards think that ANYTHING is mostly made by the work of machines.
Many manufactures say it's quite possible, but fashion trends and fads make them have to change too often.
No they don't. Nobody with a shred of intelligence would say that for the EXACT FUCKING REASONS I just laid out. You're starting with DIRT and trying to end up with a PHONE. You are trying to limit the "construction" of the iphone to the assembly of the parts.
That's the last goddamn step. Everything that comes before is just (if not more) as important. I'm not gonna rehash it.
You tell me how we start with dirt, end up with an iphone, and have 90% of that automated.
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Well you are not going to ask a newborn to pay 9 months of back rent?
Most kids can't do simple jobs until they are around 5/6 years old. So our early years, the idea of free stuff is prevalent. However Santa and the Easter Bunny actually teach rudimentary capitalism. To get something really nice but unpractical, you better be behave while not breaking the idea of unconditional love from their parents.
Newsflash: Basing Things on Ignorance Doesn't Work (Score:1)
Applies to groundhog day (even if it might be a fun tradition), and antivaxxers and climate change deniers (especially when it kills people).
Who'd have thought (Score:1)
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No kidding. Are there people who actually believe that Groundhog Day predictions were accurate?
And all this time... (Score:2)
All this time I thought it had rigorous scientific backing...
I bet this is just another example of fake news...
Yeah, the probablity is simmilar (Score:2)
But they flip coins everywhere, sports being foremost. Groundhogs are a lot more fun.
Does global warming have a better score? (Score:1)
Which surprises precisely no one (Score:1)
So a team of researchers... (Score:2)
So a team of researchers from Lakehead University honestly spent time researching and documenting this? Apparently Lakehead University has more money than they need.
Ig Nobel run? Re:So a team of researchers... (Score:1)
Maybe they are TRYING to get next year's Ig Nobel Prize.
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Hey, at least it's cute and furry (Score:1)
We could be getting our forecasts from a blobfish [earthrangers.com]. Not cute. No fur.
Re:Wow (Score:1)
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Of Course (Score:1)
Punxsutawney Phil (Score:3)
Groundhog Refuses To Emerge To See Shadow Until Rogan Banned [babylonbee.com]
Thank you thank you thank you (Score:2)
Oh, I am so glad to hear this news. I was really worried that it was a truly predictive test.
Seems a lot better than chance to me (Score:2)
Essex Ed from Essex, Connecticut; Chuckles from Manchester, Connecticut; and Stonewall Jackson from Wantage, New Jersey -- scored correctly more than 70 percent of the time.
Maybe it's only some groundhogs that can work it, but 70% is quite a bit beyond "chance"!! And the aspect of three of them being that good is intriguing, it's not just one outlier.
Maybe breed those groundhogs and see if you can up those percentages... this sounds like a job for the CIA paranormal division.
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Nah, only select the 5% of groundhogs whose predictions were statistically significantly better than chance to breed.
Does that mean (Score:2)
...the author doesn't believe in fat squirrel meteorologists?
I'm shocked (Score:2)
I, for one, am shocked that a rodent is worse than meteorologists at predicting future weather, and its "prediction" is no better than an uninformed guess! Next thing you know, they'll tell me to stop taking medical advice from my pet rat.
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Next thing you know, they'll tell me to stop taking medical advice from my pet rat.
It is acceptable to follow his advice regarding cooking, however.
Re:I'm shocked (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know, they'll tell me to stop taking medical advice from my pet rat.
It is acceptable to follow his advice regarding cooking, however.
Well yeah, I think that Documentary [imdb.com] from Disney proved that.
Fake news (Score:2)
Punxsutawney Phil is right, I tell you! These rumors are being spread by malicious people who want to destroy our country.
Six weeks of winter (Score:2)
If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, we will have six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, we'll have a month and a half. I'd say he's pretty accurate!
Do they ever define 'Early Spring'? (Score:2)
Why blame the groundhog? (Score:3)
If its human handler proclaims that the rodent sees its shadow...
What we have here is a failure to communicate. The problem is clearly not with incorrect predictions by the groundhogs, but with the inability of the handler to understand what it's saying. That's probably why the younger groundhogs appear to be worse: everyone knows kids these days speak a different language...
Thank you Captain Obvious (Score:2)
No, it's onions (Score:1)
My wife's onion harvest predicts the next winter, and are usually correct if properly interpreted. Says she.
More likely, weather patterns change slowly over the years and last winter will be somewhat like this winter.