A METEOR CAME HOW CLOSE?

Ive also got heavy math modelling training and Im not as impressed with "truth defined by models" as others. Ive always found that math models are "outcome based" , I can get whatever outcome out of it that I want, merely in the calibration phases. I do a lot of a model called TOUGH II and MODFLOW . Both are standard tools and both have gotten heavy use in almost forensic arenas. I love tearing em apart in court.

When we get too sophisticated in modeling, we seem to forget that reality doesnt always follow.

There's an antidote for a beautiful smoke with a perfect draw?

MWAH HA HA HA HAAA> You will slowly become "Progressivized" and , by April, you will go out shopping for A volvo . By July, you will join the Global Warming "deth to all polluting Humans" squad.
BY 2010 you will be moving to MAssachussetts.

The plan is working

Farmerman - you're conflating 2 concepts, seems to me, tools and ability in using them. The statistical packages are tools: anyone of moderate intelligence can be taught to use them. But what requires professional training is the basic principle that "the essence of science is the repeatable experiment."

"Outcome-based" is a meaningless term going by that definition. I know there's tremendous abuse with people constructing mathematical, economic, financial, even biological or geological models using only data in a specific interval, in which they support whatever "model" they're peddling, and deliberately ignoring outliers even inside their defined interval (least-squares can be adapted for that, as you know) and just ignoring data outside their chosen intervals.

The debacle in the "financial engineering" models is the most recent example of that - sigma, variance gamma, any number of other variables were estimated over a couple of years' experience, and sometimes less than that.

OF COURSE their predictive value turned out to be zero, or even negative, even in cases where no outright fraud was involved.

PS Fan of Prof. Wilson here, posting excerpt from review of his "Consilience":

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0679450777/ref=dp_proddesc_0/176-2719369-3494049?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

If thats the case then schools like Princeton and Stanford are investing time in teaching tools along with the underlying sciences that govern the modelling "Shortcuts" Geologic models deal with independent variables that are, either by time or scale, are diffciult to measure in the field.
An outcome base mnodelling is a bit of a communication tool. Try to explain a math model to a jury .MAny times a deliberative body is tasked with making decisions and they often get "buffaloed" by models. That is a fact.
Many modellers are, like IDers, in that they truly believe that they have the capability to describe any geoilogic situation accurately. A model is a good tool for approximation and estimation at best. Its never a design tool.
ANyway, our terms for modelling may vary between us. I use finite element and analytical models with iteration terms. I will use a model to "guesstimate" how far a plume of rare earth elements may be mobilized in a ground water body. I am usually off by 100% of the predicted distance. This is ok to us because we can check this in the field by direct measurements in sampling ports. Geophysical models to predict earthquakes are stillnot very dependable because we are missing important variables . WE all know how valuable weather models are. When there is a strrong possibility that natural systems are modifiable during the predictive runs, we can only hope that we have a "best guess'.

You seem to trust your models more than I trust scientific natural system models. Id never design an ore extraction system based on a MODFLOW output. Id demand much more field data, however the model would help us corral the important areas of inquiry .

Trend surface (3rd dreivative) models are a statistical trick to map possible ore bodies based on several variables. SOrt of like kriging. its a good tool but hardly exact.
Thers too much money invested in mine designs to rely upon models as anything more than a first approximation .

You say that your involved in financial modelling. PWrhaps you can tell me how most financial models missed this latest downturn

Close doesn't count in space collisions and horseshoes.

Man clearly expends far more energy on destruction/delusion than preservation/rationality.

After all...........cosmetics are more important than meteor strikes..........it's important to look good when the end is nigh.

A "near miss" by a sufficiently large enough body could, if enough gravitational energy were shared, send our planet into a lower sun orbit(or further sun orbit). As for horshoes. The way I play, I keep others from scoring more points if Im closer than their other shoes. (Or izzat only in curling?)

I understand the attraction of massive bodies............but I'm not Italian........so I prefer to see the sky..........when the earth moves.

(lots of entendres, innuendos and puns going on)

Even though I'm miffed you missed my school in the duo you enumerated, I will answer you: you see that little epsilon at the end of the equation? That's half the answer. The other half is in the assumption of continuously differentiable functions - duh, discontinuities are real phenomena.

Not that I'd like to have to explain any of this to a jury, mind you!

You and I might know a day or 2 in advance, which is plenty of time, to change the course of meteors. I assure you, the US, Russia know about these things waaay in advance. You thought those bunkers were built for the cold war? Pssst. More like for the star wars. No need to move to Mass, every state will be free sooner or later. Just make sure you know when the ants are coming back out of their farm, so you could give them the proper Thank You.

You want some definate co2 proof people....from a GIS student?
No problem.
CO2 is awesome for plants, look up the georgia guidestones, all peaches and cream except for the 1st one. Damn those nature worshippers, damn them.
The US showed its ass in Japan twice, since then, they learned to keep the people, not as well informed.
But really, we dont need to hear it from them. There's enough disclosureproject organizations that we no longer need govnt verification, since it was never really in our favor to begin with.


LOL

A near miss would be great, most likely just tilt us on our axis some more. I always though that the waterfront property was too expensive these days, and too crowded. Thats why I dont worry so much about Pakistan, and all those eaters in China and India...and i got a feeling Canada is going to be a lot warmer, than it currently is...even as we leave this solar maxima year, and approach a cold spell.