Looking for help for a University Paper

[temp]

since this thread is going all over the place...I've always wanted to see a statistic on weather predictions so that we can find out which ones have the better track record.

For example, if I predict that it is going to rain in 2 days, and then, when that day comes along 2 days from now, if it really does rain, then my prediction is correct..so I'm batting a thousand.
Every day when the weather guy observes the weather, they look into our past forecasts (haha, the opposite of Asimov's future history...history's future?!?) and check: Did we predict correctly the weather that we are currently experiencing?

Then, I can observe that the weatherman on channel 519 has a accuracy rating of 60%, but that other weather channel only gives 55%...so I know which weather guy to listen to.

[slaven41]

For example, if I predict that it is going to rain in 2 days, and then, when that day comes along 2 days from now, if it really does rain, then my prediction is correct..so I'm batting a thousand.
Every day when the weather guy observes the weather, they look into our past forecasts (haha, the opposite of Asimov's future history...history's future?!?) and check: Did we predict correctly the weather that we are currently experiencing?

I actually had students do this in a Meteorology class that I teach. It's not really enough, though, to see how often a forecast is correct. I could say "warm and sunny" 31 times in July and probably hit about 75% here in Sioux City. So I had them compare professional forecasts to things like persistence forecasting (take today's high temperature and that's your prediction for tomorrow's high temperature) and historical forecasting (predict tomorrow's high temperature based on the historical average). I also had some groups compare a 1-day, 3-day, and 5-day forecast. Of course, they only did this for about a month and a half, so you can't really draw much of a conclusion, but the results were about what you would expect. The professional forecast really did do better than the cruder techniques.

Malcontent, nice paper. I always thought the supposed "Deckard is a replicant" big reveal at the end was pretty pointless. It seems to me that there are two reasons for a surprising reveal in a movie. One is to explain things that had been unclear previously. "Oh, he's a replicant. Now some of the previous stuff makes sense." But making Deckard a replicant at the end explains nothing. There's really nothing leading up to the big reveal that foreshadows it or that is better explained by it. We might as well find out at the very end of The Sound of Music that Maria is a replicant.

The other reason is to observe the consequences of the big reveal. But in Blade Runner the big reveal happens at the very end and we get no consequences. It's not even clear that Deckard knows what's supposedly been revealed, so there ARE no consequences.

So making Deckard a replicant at the end has always seemed pointless to me. Like maybe Scott smoked a couple of joints one night and thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if Deckard was a replicant?!?"

As for the unicorn origami, I think that can be seen as illustrating a commonality of human experience. That is, the isolation in which the human characters of Blade Runner live is completely artificial given that we all have the same hopes, dreams, and aspirations. These common hopes, dreams, and aspirations are illustrated by the fact that Deckard and What's-his-face both have unicorns on their mind, independently.

--Dave

[admin]

Maria is a replicant!

That give a whole new meaning to the song, "The hills are alive!"

[Brightonian]

I always thought the supposed "Deckard is a replicant" big reveal at the end was pretty pointless. It seems to me that there are two reasons for a surprising reveal in a movie. One is to explain things that had been unclear previously. "Oh, he's a replicant. Now some of the previous stuff makes sense." But making Deckard a replicant at the end explains nothing.

--Dave

I always thought that too.

Afraid I haven't read Malcontent's paper yet - I already read 36 student papers today and this is my downtime

On the other strand of this thread - everyone knows you don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows ...

[Malcontent]

Maria is a replicant!

That give a whole new meaning to the song, "The hills are alive!"

No way! She needed to have the poofie Rachael hair to be a replicant...or the crazy Pris hair and makeup...or the Zhora snake...only THEN can Maria have been a replicant. Now, those meddling kids...they are another matter entirely. Robots the damned lot of them.

Afraid I haven't read Malcontent's paper yet - I already read 36 student papers today and this is my downtime

Slacker! LOL.