Edgar Fiedler Quotes

The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

I began as a weatherman and I learned very quickly I wasn't very good at it.

You want to evaluate future borrowers, but in order to train an algorithm that will help you identify future defaults, you have to train it and evaluate it on past data.

Being at NASA and having the access to both computing capability and satellite observation capability is kind of the ideal research situation to try to understand global climate change.

When human judgment and big data intersect there are some funny things that happen.

Economic forecasting has actually got pretty good over the years, though admittedly, we don't always get it right.

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.

We have entered an era where the kinds of data and analyses that people run have gotten incredibly complicated. So you have researchers using sophisticated software programs that they probably don't understand but are generally accepted and everyone [in the field] uses.

I fear that the public at home expect too prompt results.

The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.

Relativity was a highly technical new theory that gave new meanings to familiar concepts and even to the nature of the theory itself. The general public looked upon relativity as indicative of the seemingly incomprehensible modern era, educated scientists despaired of ever understanding what Einstein had done, and political ideologues used the new theory to exploit public fears and anxieties—all of which opened a rift between science and the broader culture that continues to expand today.

However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures.

These days, as I am older and wiser, I realize that there is a danger in becoming an icon, as people can see you as remote and untouchable, and they are less willing to tolerate you doing things that don't fit with their preconceived idea of you.

We are going to completely change what it means to do advanced analytics with our data solutions. We have machine-learning stuff that is about really bringing advanced analytics and statistical machine learning into data-science departments everywhere.

I think the days of the climate deniers are over. To deny basic science is to risk the trust of the general public.

By definition, big data cannot yield complicated descriptions of causality. Especially in healthcare. Almost all of our diseases occur in the intersections of systems in the body.

Meteorologists don't use a script, and most create their own graphics and certainly put together their own forecasts. Most of us went to school to become scientists - at least I did - and studied thermodynamics, physics, and tons of calculus to take this young science to the next level. Our accuracy is amazing and will only continue to improve.

As far as the general public is concerned, I always tell people that you need to look like a dance teacher like you're looking for a pediatrician.

When I took over the ministry for science and technology, our weather systems were in shambles. Nobody believed in the IMD. Nothing was in digital mode. I changed all that. We got automatic rain gauges, automatic weather stations, Doppler radars.

I'm not too worried about stats and stuff like that.

I learned analytics. It's a point of reference, of information. It has to be a factor in decision making.

By using big data, it will also be possible to predict adverse weather conditions, rerouting ships to avoid delays, and monitor fuel data, thereby allowing companies to optimize their supply chains and the way they drive their business.

Every day we go over data and use science and data to drive policy and decision-making.