Thursday, May 21, 2015
Casually weird 2
The Weather Bureau is at it again. I can parse how it happens, though I obviously don't know any of their systems. Computer models generate curves with max temp and min temp at specific times, then a natural-language creator plugs the max/min into human-sounding template sentences. Somewhere between those two stages, the timepoints for the mins and maxes are displaced by about 14 hours. [Or maybe 10 hours the other way; can't tell which.] The low should be around 5 AM, not 3 PM; and the high should be around 5 PM, not 3 AM. The natural-language creator catches the fact that these timepoints are NOT usual and writes a special text to indicate this.
It's a bit like a defective chatbot. Language-generator is clever enough to sound like it understands the abnormality, but it's not clever enough to realize how WILDLY abnormal the abnormality is. Especially when these sudden changes happen without a windstorm.
Chatbot: How tall are you?
Human: I'm 5 foot 2. Shorter than most. It's not easy.
Chatbot: Yes, I understand. I'm -9999999.99 feet tall, so I'm a little shorter than you. It's certainly no fun.
Few hours later: Fixed again. Nice to know that actual humans are checking these things! Especially since today is World Metrology Day!
Next day: The defective chatbot was accidentally halfway right. An unpredicted little thunderstorm popped up Friday at 3 PM and lowered the temp from 83 to 70. Incidentally, this storm system was yet another reverse-driver, sliding from east to west. I'm pretty sure all the storms this spring have been moving in odd directions. N-->S, S-->N, E-->W but none of the normal W-->E.
The Weather Bureau is at it again. I can parse how it happens, though I obviously don't know any of their systems. Computer models generate curves with max temp and min temp at specific times, then a natural-language creator plugs the max/min into human-sounding template sentences. Somewhere between those two stages, the timepoints for the mins and maxes are displaced by about 14 hours. [Or maybe 10 hours the other way; can't tell which.] The low should be around 5 AM, not 3 PM; and the high should be around 5 PM, not 3 AM. The natural-language creator catches the fact that these timepoints are NOT usual and writes a special text to indicate this.
It's a bit like a defective chatbot. Language-generator is clever enough to sound like it understands the abnormality, but it's not clever enough to realize how WILDLY abnormal the abnormality is. Especially when these sudden changes happen without a windstorm.
Chatbot: How tall are you?
Human: I'm 5 foot 2. Shorter than most. It's not easy.
Chatbot: Yes, I understand. I'm -9999999.99 feet tall, so I'm a little shorter than you. It's certainly no fun.
Few hours later: Fixed again. Nice to know that actual humans are checking these things! Especially since today is World Metrology Day!
Next day: The defective chatbot was accidentally halfway right. An unpredicted little thunderstorm popped up Friday at 3 PM and lowered the temp from 83 to 70. Incidentally, this storm system was yet another reverse-driver, sliding from east to west. I'm pretty sure all the storms this spring have been moving in odd directions. N-->S, S-->N, E-->W but none of the normal W-->E.
Labels: Metrology
¶ 1:40 AM
