Why are records always "SMASHED!!!"

[FenceFurniture]

:ranton:

Yet another absurd claim on a record being set exceeded broken no dammit, it was SMASHED!!!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/sa-heating-up-with-records-expected-to-be-broken/10745220

Yep, Adelaide's record temp for the hottest day was smashed to smithereens today by.....wait for it.....waaait.....
a whole whopping 0.1° :doh:

And then, they have the hide to go on and say
"Adelaide's previous maximum temperature of 46.1C was set in 1939, just above the original 45C Thursday forecast."
So, 1.1° above is "just above" but 0.1° is a record smasher.

It doesn't seem to matter by what miserable little margin any new record is set, it's always a SMASH! :~

:rantoff:
(for the moment :D)

[Kuffy]

A single day of 46.1° will leave me feeling pretty smashed too. Luckily it's a lovely 39° here in Melbourne, with 19% humidity. The garage is a potato chip factory at the moment :D

[FenceFurniture]

A single day of 46.1° will leave me feeling pretty smashed too.So what on earth would happen to you if it rose dramatically by 0.1° to 46.2? (the new smash hit in Adelaide)

[Kuffy]

Well I'm not too sure, but the big bold letters have me a little frightened :D

[Simplicity]

:ranton:

Yet another absurd claim on a record being set exceeded broken no dammit, it was SMASHED!!!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/sa-heating-up-with-records-expected-to-be-broken/10745220

Yep, Adelaide's record temp for the hottest day was smashed to smithereens today by.....wait for it.....waaait.....
a whole whopping 0.1° :doh:

And then, they have the hide to go on and say
"Adelaide's previous maximum temperature of 46.1C was set in 1939, just above the original 45C Thursday forecast."
So, 1.1° above is "just above" but 0.1° is a record smasher.

It doesn't seem to matter by what miserable little margin any new record is set, it's always a SMASH! :~

:rantoff:
(for the moment :D)

Brett
It’s all relative if you spent your days working in 0.000 degrees that’s huge.

If your like me, and a little whimsy, anything over 23 degrees is just bloody hot [emoji3062].

It’s your perspective (or perspiration)that matters

Cheers Matt,

[BobL]

:ranton:

Yet another absurd claim on a record being set exceeded broken no dammit, it was SMASHED!!!

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-24/sa-heating-up-with-records-expected-to-be-broken/10745220

Yep, Adelaide's record temp for the hottest day was smashed to smithereens today by.....wait for it.....waaait.....
a whole whopping 0.1° :doh:

And then, they have the hide to go on and say
"Adelaide's previous maximum temperature of 46.1C was set in 1939, just above the original 45C Thursday forecast."
So, 1.1° above is "just above" but 0.1° is a record smasher.

It doesn't seem to matter by what miserable little margin any new record is set, it's always a SMASH! :~


I agree complete bollocks. Back in 1939 the temperature could probably only be measured reliably to within 0.1ºC anyway and even today there has to be some sort of tolerance place on a measurement - where they measured in the exact same place? because the measurement sites typically change over time.

At best I would say the temperatures are "approximately equivalent"

[FenceFurniture]

where they measured in the exact same place?Nope, and I just happen to have the answer to that. There is a YUGE difference in where they were taken. In '39 it was 0.1mm to the left of the current spot.
(tempting to use bold and size 3 for the "YUGE" but I think Kuffy's had enough trauma for one day)

[Sir Stinkalot]

Well as somebody in Adelaide who has just ridden home from work .... it’s hot!

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190124/73659b4754d8055a42c7e428afcdb626.jpg

[rwbuild]

I put "smashed" in the same category as the real estate term " a large 1/4 acre block".... as opposed to a small 1/4 acre block.......
as Jululia Gillard said, its all hyperbowl .....

[FenceFurniture]

Ha! Did she really say that? As a Solicitor, nay, as a Prime Minister, she should have known way better than that...

So not a gently sloping block? (aka Billy Goat Country)

[crowie]

It's all a media ploy to get you to watch [or read] the story and the advertisement [or ratings for the ABC], thus revenue :o

The media, yes, even the ABC is all about ratings and revenue;

the truth and the story are more than often fantasy.

On this hot weather story, in 1939 temperature would have been measured in Fahrenheit,

but I often wonder on the correctness of early record keeping plus what happened before recording keeping,

though that doesn't help this story's sensationalism....

Sorry folks, but I have long since given up on trusting the media and its manipulative ways...

[FenceFurniture]

Yeah I get your thrust Peter, and I agree with you, but in this case it didn't say "xxxshed" (can't bring myself to say it) until the body of the story, so in other words it wasn't click bait as a heading on the main page. Just some dippy "journo" regurgitating what they have always read.

As for advert revenue - they get nowt out of me. I don't see any adverts anywhere and I don't feel even a little bit deprived.

[Cal]

All I know is that riding around on a postie bike delivering mail today in the Adelaide Hills, it was flaming hot! Record smashing or not, I hope we don’t see too many days past 40 for a while.
Here are a few times of day that I snapped of the phone.
5:30 am as I got to work.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190124/9649065fdf5b007f90d83d2789d80b5a.jpg
3:10 pm as I got home
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190124/d078bb80d28f726d5325b88e802d0d75.jpg
9:00 pm no chance in temp due until midnight, not sure by how much.
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190124/1f386be6e7817122981aa260090d4707.jpg

[ian]

I agree complete bollocks. Back in 1939 the temperature could probably only be measured reliably to within 0.1ºC anyway and even today there has to be some sort of tolerance place on a measurement - where they measured in the exact same place? because the measurement sites typically change over time.
bloody physicists 46.1 +/- 0.05 is the same as 46.2 +/- 0.05.

reminds me of the joke told by [pure] mathematicians "I know there's an answer to 2 + 3 =, I just don't know what it is!"

[ian]

But Brett
you are overlooking tow very big variables

In 1939, the temperature would have been recorded in degrees Fahrenheit, possibly to a precision of 0.5 degrees, possibly not.
That temperature would have been written by hand into a ledger of some sort.

Later that hand written number has been
1. converted into degrees Celsius -- and because 1 degree Celsius = 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit the reported value will have been "rounded" to 0.1. Note that if the original Fahrenheit temperature was recorded with a precision of +/- 0.5 degrees, then the conversion to centigrade should have a precision of about +/- 0.2 degrees.

2. digitised -- meaning we have no assurance that reported value is the same as the recorded value.


so all in all a reported 0.1 degree higher temperature today could actually be a lower temp than that recorded in 1939.

[BobL]

bloody physicists 46.1 +/- 0.05 is the same as 46.2 +/- 0.05.
reminds me of the joke told by [pure] mathematicians "I know there's an answer to 2 + 3 =, I just don't know what it is!"

It depends what you means by "2"

a) Some physicists will say that a number expressed as 2 (ie no decimal) usually means 2 +/- 1 in the last digit, so 3 = 3 +/-1 so the answer to 2 + 3 = somewhere between 3 and 7?

b) Mathematicians are more likely to say that numbers expressed as "2" and "3" represent integers so they are 2 +/- 0 and 3+/- 0 so the answer is 5 +/- 0

In case a) where no decimal is shown, the uncertainty is technically in the last non zero digit so a number like "100" is 100 +/- 100 if you want to show indicate that you mean 100 +/-1 you should show the input numbers as 100. ie specifically include the decimal point.

I spent many hours in international science and tech panels discussing this and related concepts. It sounds like crap but it is essential for international scientific and engineering communication and even in trade of things like precious metals. A friend of mine was working for an international LPG trading company and he saved the company millions by potentially by showing how important it was to know exactly what the numbers meant. (Specifically he worked on reducing the uncertainty of the Universal gas constant)

[ian]

It depends what you means by "2"

a) Some physicists will say that a number expressed as 2 (ie no decimal) usually means 2 +/- 1 in the last digit, so 3 = 3 +/-1 so the answer to 2 + 3 = somewhere between 3 and 7? that's what I meant by "bloody physicists", their answer to 2 + 3 is 5 +/- 2.


b) Mathematicians are more likely to say that numbers expressed as "2" and "3" represent integers so they are 2 +/- 0 and 3+/- 0 so the answer is 5 +/- 0 I did qualify it by referring to PURE mathematicians. It's those APPLIED buggers who contend that 2 + 3 = 5

the joke can be extended to accountants who when asked what's 2 + 3, respond "what ever number you need".

BTW, if you ask an engineer, what's 2 + 3, the answer is 9 -- after applying the appropriate "safety factors"





But I'd be more interested in a response to my other post about comparing "converted" temperature measurements from 80 years ago with actual measurements made today.

[rustynail]

To me, broken means able to be fixed. Smashed means irreparably damaged. Point one of a degree is nothing. I grew up in the far west of NSW and spent most of my childhood wandering the middle of Australia. As kids we thought nothing of forty degrees. It was dry heat.
Now humidity, that's the game breaker.

[fenderbelly]

can I just say it was bloody hot

[BobL]

But I'd be more interested in a response to my other post about comparing "converted" temperature measurements from 80 years ago with actual measurements made today.

There would have been no problem with conversion from F to C as the conversion factor has not changed since that time.
It turns out that accurate temperature measurements were being done more than 100 years ago provided the exact same thing was being measured ie the boiling point of distilled water at the same atmospheric pressure.

However, reliable atmospheric temperature measurements require the use of a shelter called a Stephenson screen which date from the late 1880's but one does not always know how widespread in use or how well maintained they were even as late as the 1950's . If such a screen was not being used or the screen was in a poor state of repair then chances are the temperatures would have been unreliable and were almost always measured too high. Reports of record high temperatures around the middle and turn of the 19th century are therefore generally considered highly suspect. Climate change deniers often trawl out the 1896 record temperatures as evidence that it was hotter back then than today. They also claim that these have been expunged from the record by climate changers.

See FactCheck: was the 1896 heatwave wiped from the record? (http://theconversation.com/factcheck-was-the-1896-heatwave-wiped-from-the-record-33742) for the fact check on that one.

Official BOM weather stations are also occasionally moved which make comparisons tricky.


I did qualify it by referring to PURE mathematicians. It's those APPLIED buggers who contend that 2 + 3 = 5
My experience is that 5 would be the answer given by pure maths people as they don't usually consider uncertainty. Applied mathematicians are more likely to look at tolerances etc.

[BobL]

But I'd be more interested in a response to my other post about comparing "converted" temperature measurements from 80 years ago with actual measurements made today.

There would have been no problem with conversion from F to C as the conversion factor has not changed since that time.
It turns out that accurate temperature measurements were being done more than 100 years ago provided the exact same thing was being measured ie the boiling point of distilled water at the same atmospheric pressure.

However, reliable atmospheric temperature measurements require the use of a shelter called a Stephenson screen which date from the late 1880's but one does not always know how widespread in use or how well maintained they were even as late as the 1950's . If such a screen was not being used or the screen was in a poor state of repair then chances are the temperatures would have been unreliable and were almost always measured too high. Reports of record high temperatures around the middle and turn of the 19th century are therefore generally considered highly suspect. Climate change deniers often trawl out the 1896 record temperatures as evidence that it was hotter back then than today. They also claim that these have been expunged from the record by climate changers.

See FactCheck: was the 1896 heatwave wiped from the record? (http://theconversation.com/factcheck-was-the-1896-heatwave-wiped-from-the-record-33742) for the fact check on that one.

Official BOM weather stations are also occasionally moved which make comparisons tricky.

Easy to read technical report on the BOM weather station with a large section on history and background here
http://cawcr.gov.au/technical-reports/CTR_049.pdf


I did qualify it by referring to PURE mathematicians. It's those APPLIED buggers who contend that 2 + 3 = 5
My experience is that 5 would be the answer given by pure maths people as they don't usually consider uncertainty. Applied mathematicians are more likely to look at tolerances etc.

[FenceFurniture]

For your various interests :D
http://www.woodworkforums.com/f43/katoomba-monthly-temp-average-set-smashed-225827

[Lyle]

Let's bring in the cricket "heros". Or footy heros. Or such. Other much abused words or terms. :((

[ian]

There would have been no problem with conversion from F to C as the conversion factor has not changed since that time.
It turns out that accurate temperature measurements were being done more than 100 years ago provided the exact same thing was being measured ie the boiling point of distilled water at the same atmospheric pressure.
I know the conversion factor has remained at 1.8 since 1804(?) when the French academy established the centigrade scale.

But Bob you have missed the core point.

Back in 1939, civil temperature was measured in degrees Fahrenheit, if you convert 46.1 Celsius to Fahrenheit you get 114.98 -- but you would need to show me a year's worth of records before I believed you that back in 1939 daily temperatures were measured to a precision of 1/100th of a degree. So until you do I suggest that the old record was 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Back in 1939, it's possible that the "official" Adelaide thermometer had a precision of 0.5 degrees, but I suspect that back then the precision was most likely 1 degree. Remember we are talking civil temperatures, not fancy and expensive laboratory instruments which are periodically re-calibrated.

So the new Adelaide "record" of 46.2 Celsius just happens to be 115.16 Fahrenheit which if it had occurred in 1939 would most probably have been written as 115 degrees F.

So the "new record maximum" is most probably just a second instance of the previous maximum temperature. Not a new record at all.

[rrich]

There is an old joke about numbers but I'll post it in jokes.

[ian]

My experience is that 5 would be the answer given by pure maths people as they don't usually consider uncertainty. Applied mathematicians are more likely to look at tolerances etc.
It's a joke Bob.

Physicist: 2 + 3 is really 2 +/- 0.5 plus 3 +/-0.5 = 5 +/-1

Engineer: 2 + 3, well you have to account for the various factors of safety, 2 + 3 becomes 2 x (DL SF of 1.5) + 3 x (LL SF of 2) = 2 x 1.5 + 3 x 2 = 3 + 6 = 9

Applied mathematician: 2 + 3 = 5

Pure Mathematician: (one who deals in the abstract), ponders a moment or two, and then says "2 + 3 I know there is an answer, but I'm not sure what it is."

Accountant: "you ask me what is 2 + 3, it can be any answer you want."

[arose62]

Well, having just been exposed to"The Good Place", I now know that "smash" means sexual intercourse to generations younger than me, so that temperature record is well and truly forked :)

[BobL]

I know the conversion factor has remained at 1.8 since 1804(?) when the French academy established the centigrade scale.

But Bob you have missed the core point.

Back in 1939, civil temperature was measured in degrees Fahrenheit, if you convert 46.1 Celsius to Fahrenheit you get 114.98 -- but you would need to show me a year's worth of records before I believed you that back in 1939 daily temperatures were measured to a precision of 1/100th of a degree. So until you do I suggest that the old record was 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Back in 1939, it's possible that the "official" Adelaide thermometer had a precision of 0.5 degrees, but I suspect that back then the precision was most likely 1 degree. Remember we are talking civil temperatures, not fancy and expensive laboratory instruments which are periodically re-calibrated.

So the new Adelaide "record" of 46.2 Celsius just happens to be 115.16 Fahrenheit which if it had occurred in 1939 would most probably have been written as 115 degrees F.

So the "new record maximum" is most probably just a second instance of the previous maximum temperature. Not a new record at all.

I don't know how widespread they were in use but even back as the early 1900's there were many mercury thermometers that could measure to 0.1ºC. We had some of these at Uni that were standard first year undergraduate thermometers from the old Perth Technical College (TAFE) from ~ 1910. I would assume the official Adelaide BOM thermometer in 1939 would have then been at least as good at these if not better.

Mercury in glass thermometers go back to Newton and were refined by Fahrenheit in the early 1700's. During the 1700's and 1800's thermometry became a highly developed science (would have been the equivalent of subatomic physics today) and had many many people working in the field as every half amateur naturalist had a least one and many had several. A serious naturalist would travel with a leather case with a set of these probably lined in purple velvet to cover different temp ranges and to take averages and cater for breakage.

Given that glass blowing was well developed, high resolution was not that difficult to achieve ie draw long columns of glass tubing attach to a mercury bulb and calibrate against the boiling and freezing point of pure water. To get 0.1ºC resolution the tubing is made finer/ longer. 1m long master calibrator thermometers only needed to have lines 1mm apart to achieve 0.1ºC. Then using magnifiers 1/2 and 1/4 and even 1/5mm etching marks could be made. Several of these masters were used to calibrate shorter but still high res working thermometers with limited temperature ranges which made them easier to transport in purple velvet lined leather cases..

Mercury in glass thermomemeters are still considered to be one of the most accurate ways of measuring temperature and were only phased out of the NIST reference temperature measurement program about 30 years ago.

So actual thermometer used back then is unlikely to be at fault issue - it's the location, how the measurement was done, and who was the nut behind the wheel.

I am reminded of a Temp-Time graph of water supposedly coming up to the boil from room temp submitted in an experimental report by a grade 11 chemistry student back in 1978. The graph showed a quick rise in temp to about 35ºC and then it did not change much after that. Instead of placing the bulb in the water the student had been holding the thermometer bulb between his fingers and had the other end in heating water. I think that student ended up doing engineering at Uni.

[FenceFurniture]

Ok, just to drag this back on topic, and away from how many beans make 5, and the History of the Thermometer (as interesting as it is), it's 29° at my desk right now which smashed yesterday's record of nearly 29°. However, yesterday was not the record. That would have been last week when it was 32.

(this is a fun thread - let's not bog it down)

[chambezio]

Under the front verandah roof of our little piece of rural Australia the thermometer is saying its 35°. The back verandah says its 31°. Whether the 2 thermometers are trying to out do each other is an unknown. I do know one thing......its flamin' hot and its going get even hotter......so with the prevailing weather conditions,at hand, we have the Evaporitive Cooler set at 24°, so now its up to me to.......settle in my recliner and reread an old novel from my high school days.
I went out to the shed earlier for 10 minutes and that was enough to convince me to stay indoors

[FenceFurniture]

I went out to the shed earlier for 10 minutes and that was enough to convince me to stay indoorsOn the contrary Rod. This is the scene from last week's 38° day.

448449

In the background you can see the shed aircon humming away. (the beer and book are out of frame)

The rest is self explanatory. :D

Just going down now to replicate it.....

[Picko]

The rest is self explanatory. :D

Yeah your bed made up on the floor explains a lot. You've been thrown out of the house! (insert smiley) Can't get smileys to work.

[rustynail]

Air conditioning is very bad for wood, but very nice for wood workers. But in the temperate climes of the Blue Mnts? What a bloody woozer?:D

[FenceFurniture]

What a bloody woozer?:D:bartmoon:

[ian]

Ok, just to drag this back on topic, and away from how many beans make 5, and the History of the Thermometer
let me have some fun !!

[BobL]

Well, apart from a couple of 40º days a week ago the weather here has been great for shed work - trouble I have been too knackered to do more than a few minutes work at the bench and then I need at least a half hour rest. Sleep is ruined. Last night I got 4 hours instead of the usual 3. Went to bed at ~8:30pm, fell almost instantly to sleep but cramps kicked in around 10:30 pm,got up and stayed up till 2:30am. Back to bed for not what I call real sleep (ie few minutes doses every 10 minutes or so)until and got up at 4:30am.

[rustynail]

:bartmoon:One should always put there best side to the camera.

[swk]

let me have some fun !!


Ian,
derailling the thread again (I only read it today) as an answer to your question about how accurate they read the thermometers to in the old days, I thought maybe I could download some data and do some clever statistics with the fractions. So I downloaded the max temperatures for Adelaide (West Terrace) from 1900. Turns out I cant do the stats that I thought I could, there was a flaw in my logic :-(.

However, after some hard maths graft, I did notice that if you convert say 62.4F to Celcius you get 16.888...C which rounds dup to 16.9C. Similarly 62.5F = 16.94444...C rounds down to 16.9C also. So pairs of consecutive 1/10F round to a single 1/10C value. EXCEPT where the C value is x.0 or x.5 there is only one x.xF and the conversion is exact, no need to round. EG 62.6F = 17.0C.
SO any values in the modern Celcius record which end in x.5 or x.0 must have come from an single decimal point value x.xF without rounding. In the Adelaide data for 1900 there are 90* values like this (out of 365). Because there are other (rounded) values in the modern data set between x.0 and x.5 we know that
1. there must have been fahrenheit values read with a smaller resolution than 0.5C
2. in the 90 values mentioned above, the corresponding fahrenheit values XX.x, the integers 0, 1, 2,...9 all appear for x (except 6)

- in 1900 the BOM in Adelaide were reading the max temp to a resolution of 0.1F

* if it was a truly random selection of fractions, the number of x.0 and x.5s would have been 73. So it looks as though there could be a little human bias in the readings.

Regards
SWK

[ian]

* if it was a truly random selection of fractions, the number of x.0 and x.5s would have been 73. So it looks as though there could be a little human bias in the readings.
I think it more likely that your data set -- daily max temperature for 1900 -- is not large enough and you have been caught by statistical variation.

But thank you very much for the "maths graft"
and particularly for establishing that the original Fahrenheit record has a precision of 0.1 degree.


The point I'm trying to get across to the Physics Professor, is that measuring and recording the daily temperature is not a lab exercise, it's a civil activity.
The Adelaide thermometer was likely a recording type with a two metal bars, one that was pushed up by rising mercury, the other pulled down by falling temperature and was probably only read twice per day, with the previous night's minimum recorded at 9:00 AM, and that day's maximum some time late in the afternoon -- late enough to be after the peak temperature, but early enough to be passed on to the press for the following day's published weather report.

[swk]

I think it more likely that your data set -- daily max temperature for 1900 -- is not large enough and you have been caught by statistical variation.



Hence "could"

:-)

SWK

[ian]

regarding the answer to the question: what is 2 + 3

Just let me repeat

It's a joke Bob.
perhaps go back and read the different responses




I am reminded of a Temp-Time graph of water supposedly coming up to the boil from room temp submitted in an experimental report by a grade 11 chemistry student back in 1978. The graph showed a quick rise in temp to about 35ºC and then it did not change much after that. Instead of placing the bulb in the water the student had been holding the thermometer bulb between his fingers and had the other end in heating water. I think that student ended up doing engineering at Uni.
and it's perhaps best if I not comment on the quality and teaching prowess of newly minted W.A. high school science teachers in the 1970s

[BobL]

and it's perhaps best if I not comment on the quality and teaching prowess of newly minted W.A. high school science teachers in the 1970s

Well I do remember working very hard with that particular student as he was very keen, came from a very disadvantaged background and english was not his first language, However, I would not like to claim all the credit for getting him into uni. He was also quite talented at maths, I think he got something like 95% for his calculus subject mark.

Your point above about the measurement being a civil activity is precisely my point. I'm confident the thermometers at the Adelaide BOM would have been up to a 0.1C measurement task but the personnel and other circumstances might not have been.

[FenceFurniture]

Just in:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/01/january-named-as-australias-hottest-month-on-record