I stumbled across this gem from 1st May 2007 that I taped and I didn't even remember I had. It's a BBC news report on the Met Office's prospects for summer 2007 saying 70% chance of warmer than average and 1 in 8 chance as hot as last year.

As we know, it was a washout at least June and July were

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Was that the one when they said it was going to be a "barbecue summer"? That one ended up with eggs on faces all round.

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No, that was 2009.

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[quote=KevBrads1;522314]I stumbled across this gem from 1st May 2007 that I taped and I didn't even remember I had. It's a BBC news report on the Met Office's prospects for summer 2007 saying 70% chance of warmer than average and 1 in 8 chance as hot as last year.

As we know, it was a washout at least June and July were

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTTyKoFSLnc[/quote]

 

Just proves that humans are idiots.  70% chance of something happening, is not 100%.  30% buffer is there for a reason.  If people can accept that 70% means theres a good chance of something happening, they must accept that equally theres a 30% of something bad happening.  Which means theres still a substantial chance of it going pete tong.  Humans for some reason find this concept so hard to grasp.  Hence why there is such a huge industry around gambling.

Also - a 1/8 chance - thats a 12.5% chance of it being as hot as the previous year,

 

Im not a betting man, but i understand odds, and if i ever saw a horse with a 12.5% chance of winning, I wouldnt part with my money.

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That 1 in 8 chance seems to me a bit high to me.

As for the 70%, isn't there a % for near average? So below average would not be 30%?

In any case, it was wrong.

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Just taking the very high temperatures, a 1 in 8 chance of something happening means that there is a 7 in 8 chance of something not happening. That would appear to have been correct. Considering that record breaking temperatures occurred in 1990, 2003 and 2006, 3 out of the last 17 summers had record breaking temperatures, or roughly 1 in 6. Therefore the forecast was for a lower chance than looking at recent years would suggest.

4 of the last 5 winters have been below average for CET, does that mean next winter have an 80% chance of being below average? I don't like that method working out the odds of what the next season might be because the % is dependent on how many data points you have. You used 17 summers, why not 50, 100?

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Because 50 or 100 years do not count as recent years unless you one of those trees that last for thousands of years

Its just a simple comparison to show that the chance the Met Office stated was actually less than had occurred in recent years, and lets face it not many of those had resulted in very high temperatures although there were some other very warm summers such as 1995 and 1997. Just a way of showing it to people who dont understand percentages.

Not necessarily. Sometimes the data is simply above or below average.

I suppose it could have been presented as there is a 30% chance of it being colder than average and a 7 out of 8 chance it will not be as hot as last summer.

Not sure you could actually say it was "wrong" since it had a clear 30% outcome of it being colder than average and this was right. If you over simplified it and tried to imply the 70% chance of warmer actually meant a guaranteed (100%) warm summer then it would be wrong.