Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
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Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#2So we're fucked at this point, and nobody is saying anything about it.
Don't Look Up was right. We're dumb idiots of a species.
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#3It's clearly a signal of ongoing warming, but the assumption of a Gaussian probability distribution of annual ice extent- something we only have a few tens of years of data to estimate - seems peculiar.
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#4The quote from one researcher here:
Antarctic sea ice levels dive in 'five-sigma event' (abc.net.au)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-24/antarctic-sea-ice-lev...
34 points by adrian_mrd 1 day ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36839757
has it a bit over five sigma and easily less than six.
Still hella significant.
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#5So we're fucked at this point, and nobody is saying anything about it. Don't Look Up was right. We're dumb idiots of a species.
The fun thing is, we cannot recognise this kind of danger. Our regular animalistic detection mechanism cannot be triggered by this, so we're kind of aware but nothing in us tells us to get away from the problem. Even as you write this, you probably don't truly believe that this could very well be the end. For once the slowly boiled frog thing is actually true.
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#6So we're fucked at this point, and nobody is saying anything about it. Don't Look Up was right. We're dumb idiots of a species.
The fun thing is, we cannot recognise this kind of danger. Our regular animalistic detection mechanism cannot be triggered by this, so we're kind of aware but nothing in us tells us to get away from the problem. Even as you write this, you probably don't truly believe that this could very well be the end. For once the slowly boiled frog thing is actually true.
I certainly have had my panicky days about this, so something inside me is getting at least part of the picture.
Unfortunately the people who can actually do anything about this lack the parts of their brain that could ever hope to understand.
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#7It's clearly a signal of ongoing warming, but the assumption of a Gaussian probability distribution of annual ice extent- something we only have a few tens of years of data to estimate - seems peculiar.
I’m not a statistician, but I’ve read somewhere the argument that the gaussian is the distribution that assumes the least about its data (just that there’s a mean and non-infinite variance) so it is typically safe to use when you know little about the real distribution.
(I’m just commenting to compel someone to correct me and expand on this subthread really :) )
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#8It's clearly a signal of ongoing warming, but the assumption of a Gaussian probability distribution of annual ice extent- something we only have a few tens of years of data to estimate - seems peculiar.
I’m not a statistician, but I’ve read somewhere the argument that the gaussian is the distribution that assumes the least about its data (just that there’s a mean and non-infinite variance) so it is typically safe to use when you know little about the real distribution. (I’m just commenting to compel someone to correct me and expand on this subthread really :) )
Good tactic!
> so it is typically safe to use when you know little about the real distribution.
That was what the quants doing risk assessment at the big banks thought pre-2008, which is the other context I associate with the n-sigma notation for probability
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#9It's clearly a signal of ongoing warming, but the assumption of a Gaussian probability distribution of annual ice extent- something we only have a few tens of years of data to estimate - seems peculiar.
I’m not a statistician, but I’ve read somewhere the argument that the gaussian is the distribution that assumes the least about its data (just that there’s a mean and non-infinite variance) so it is typically safe to use when you know little about the real distribution. (I’m just commenting to compel someone to correct me and expand on this subthread really :) )
Maybe you can make an argument that, in the absence of any information, your best bet is assuming a Gaussian distributon, but it definitely is not safe to assume so. Your data might not be symmetrically or even unimodally distributed and making these assumption can lead to completely wrong conclusions.
Re: Six Sigma Deviation for Antarctic Sea Ice
#10So we're fucked at this point, and nobody is saying anything about it. Don't Look Up was right. We're dumb idiots of a species.
The fun thing is, we cannot recognise this kind of danger. Our regular animalistic detection mechanism cannot be triggered by this, so we're kind of aware but nothing in us tells us to get away from the problem. Even as you write this, you probably don't truly believe that this could very well be the end. For once the slowly boiled frog thing is actually true.
It seems a bit like dying of a radiation overdose - a lethal exposure can take just moments, and you will go on as though nothing happened for a time, but the damage is done and irreversible.