On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 23:37:03 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2018-10-20 22:41, Eric Stevens wrote:
On Sat, 20 Oct 2018 09:14:23 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2018-10-19 23:06, Eric Stevens wrote:
[...]
I was merely explaining my mathematical background.
[...]

Does that include chaos theory and fractals?

Nope. I was too early for that but I have read some of the
introductory materials by Lorenz and Poincarre. But that was a long
time ago.

Ah, that explains why you believe that statistical analysis is enough to
refute claims of anthropogenic global warming.

No! Nonsense! I don't believe that at all. Quite the reverse in fact.
From what I have read I suspect some quite shonky statistical analysis
has been used to support claims of anthropogenic global warming. I
don't know enough to properly reach that conclusion myself the poor
quality of statistics in much work related to climate study has been
heavily criticised by people who are qualified to do so. e.g.
McKittrick, and Wegman. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegman_Report

I not only read "introductory materials", I constructed and ran models
of simple chaotic systems as described in some of the texts. I did so
because hands-on is the only way to understand what the math means [1].
(Sidebar: one of the models produced a lovely parabola, randomly placed
spot by randomly placed spot, as the system cycled through its
states.the parabola began to emerge at around 500 iterations, but was
still visibly gappy after 5,000.)

I got that far on a computer many years, more as entertainment than
anything else.

Take-away 1: Any system of three or more entities that mutually
influence each other is a chaotic system.

Take-away 2: One can compute any given state of such a system directly
from its initial state at T(0). You have to calculate its state at T(1),
T(2), T(3),... T(N-2), T(N-1). (That is, the system cannot be described
by a set of equations such that its state at T(N) is function of N.)

Take-away 3: The systems that matter most to us human beings are mostly
chaotic. The weather. The climate. The economy. The ecosystems that
supply us with food. The social systems that enable us to live decent
lives. Our health. Traffic on motorways. And so on.

Yep. Which causes some people to ask why it is thought possible to
model climate.

Footnote [1]: A set of numbers is meaningless without a context. Suppose
I tell you that the median score on a school test was 76 correct out of
one hundred. Is that good or bad or somewhere in between? How would you
decide? Since you claim you are able "check the raw data", you should be
able to answer those questions with no trouble at all.

THats meaningless on its own.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens