This gets added to the site based on the headline alone! It’s actually a fascinating read about how meteorologists have been successful in improving the predictability of the Earth’s atmosphere while other fields, like economics (which I also have a degree in), have faltered. It is a long piece and somewhat of a heady read, but I think you’ll find some of the points quite interesting, and I find a lot of author Nate Silver’s theories as to why weather forecasters have been successful to be quite valid.
Why are weather forecasters succeeding when other predictors fail? It’s because long ago they came to accept the imperfections in their knowledge. That helped them understand that even the most sophisticated computers, combing through seemingly limitless data, are painfully ill equipped to predict something as dynamic as weather all by themselves. So as fields like economics began relying more on Big Data, meteorologists recognized that data on its own isn’t enough.
Read the full article on the NY Times website.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/the-weatherman-is-not-a-moron.html
