Wizard of Id Classics by Parker and Hart for September 08, 2023

Lies! DAMM LIES!! And Statistics.

One time I was 91%.

That’s not a weather forecast, that’s a wither forecast……

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. I blame the government.

wow…imagine if weathermen were arrested for being wrong

Whichever way this guy goes, he’s gonna come up ‘short.’

I thought you’d say that!

Hey, 90% still leaves a 10% chance that you’ll keep your head, and I don’t mean on a shelf somewhere.

The official POP most places isn’t the probability of rain at all. It is a combination of the chances it will rain somewhere in the region and the percentage of the area that will get rain. Multiply the probabilities.

Still, the weather forecasters should erect a statue to the one who came up with it. It usually means that most people will consider that you were right, no matter what happens.

As a kid I was talking to my dad and was so proud of the two new words I had learned from The Readers Digest. One was prognosticator, the other was prevaricator. Anxious to impress my dad I told him the weather prevaricator on the radio said we would get some rain. He howled in laughter and it was only after he recovered that he explained why that was so funny.

His chances of survival just improved dramatically!

Too bad Id isn’t in Hawaii. Easy forecasting there…“In Honolulu, it’s going to be 72 and sunny. Pearl City, 72 and sunny. Mililani, 72 and sunny. Kailua, 72 and sunny. Kaneohe, 72 and sunny. In Haleiwa, 72 and sunny, and in Kapolei, 72 and sunny.”

The Fink has a hippie-dippy weatherman!

If we get 30% rain, it probably won’t reach the ground like 100% can!

I dare the King to decipher that meteorological conundrum! That’s how weather guesser can claim that their forecast is “spot on”. They borrowed heavily from the Oracle of Delphi’s playbook so no one can dispute their predictions. If you can’t dazzle ’em with your brilliance, baffle ’em with your BS ;-p

Admittedly, I’m very bad at math, but starting with the 10% and going through all the other percentages, it seems like the local weatherman is saying “it’s possible we might get some rain one of these days, or maybe not.”

Which, you know, fits in with the way I figure they figure the weather these days.

“It rained tomorrow last year, might rain tomorrow this year as well. We’ll see.”

forecasts haven’t changed since the middle ages

The King certainly knows how to get results.

I like George Carlin’s Al Sleet, the Hippy, Dippy Weatherman’s night forecast: “Tonight’s forecast, dark, turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”

100 percent chance of weather