Poll predictions are stupid

[Neven]

Background. 

[Tor Bejnar]

It's unanimous!
[Edit: well, it was.]

[SteveMDFP]

They're not stupid, they're just relatively unimportant.
I think making a prediction encourages people to think, which can only be a good thing.
Historically, ASIF collectively have exaggerated the expected pace of warming.
Being confronted with my own wrong guesses, repeatedly, has been a learning experience.

[johnm33]

No. It's important that everyone makes their best guess, just to see how wrong/right they are especially if they give some details of their reasoning, if they can, but that's not important, what is, is that they put something on record that they can't deny later. Thus we grow.

[RealityCheck]

No. Collecting data is valuable. Even if the data is subjective opinions from (relatively) interested/ informed people.  And if the polls from such people are consistently low, what does that mean? That we collectively see the writing on the wall: cryosphere melt is happening, sea level rise and climate impacts are being locked in, and the evidence is becoming increasingly stark? Let's face it, I think the low polls reflect a 'rabbit-in-the-headlights' fear that our world is changing very quickly; and we're relatively powerless on an individual level to force a change in course. And maybe we have a hope that a dramatic minimum or blue ocean event will trigger real policy change to offset the worst impacts. That would be great. But I fear not. I have striven to make meaningful positive impact; I am personally responsible for c. 45 MW of windfarms in Ireland. But I think humanity will defer urgent action until too late to avoid very harsh impacts globally. So, are polls useless? No. But perhaps not for the reasons that first come to mind.

[magnamentis]

IMO no because:

- it's part of the learning process to make proper use of available information including
. the side effect to find out what's not possible and in the best case why and look for appropriate
. input or provide ideas as to what more is needed and how to get to it.

- it's good to learn what went different and include it into future judgment to improve quality of
. discussions

[DavidR]

Also NO.
It encourages us to think about why we are making our predictions and documents our predictions so that we can address what we predicted and why. Thus learning more about our own thinking.

Of course the variation in August and September is so dependent on the weather that even the August predictions have a massive confidence range covering most of the available options. Virtually the only outcome that was improbable on August 1 was a new record, anything else was still possible.  Perhaps we should have a "What happened?" thread where we discuss why we feel our predictions were wrong.

[Peter Ellis]

They're useful, but not for anything they tell us about the ice.  They're useful as a barometer for how "connected" this forum is with reality.

An interesting exercise - if technically feasible, which I assume it isn't - would be to have two versions of the results graph.  One where everybody's vote is weighted evenly, and one where the votes are voted by how prolific each poster is.

The first of these tells us whether the readership of the forum has any insight into what's actually going on.  The second tells us who's driving the forum content, and whether they're more or less barking mad than the rest of us :-)

[RoxTheGeologist]

Can I change my vote please? And can you make the bins overlap?

[Pmt111500]

Can I change my vote please? And can you make the bins overlap?

But that's the fun part?!?

[Ned W]

They're useful, but not for anything they tell us about the ice.  They're useful as a barometer for how "connected" this forum is with reality.

Ex.act.a.mundo.  The polls tell us about us, not about the ice.

Can I change my vote please? And can you make the bins overlap?

Will we have June, July, and August versions of this poll?  And perhaps there will be separate polls for "NSIDC polls are stupid" and "JAXA polls are stupid", so we can hedge our bets by posting one way in one, and the other way in the other.

[iamlsd]

I like the polls - great outlet for a serial lurker such as myself and they might even be accurate - look up "Wisdom of the crowd" or have a look at http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4891962.htm