The History John Kelly, who worked for AT&T's Bell Laboratory, originally developed the Kelly Criterion to assist AT&T with its long distance telephone
signal noise issues.
Not exact matches
First, there's the
issue of finding the strongest
signal — the right
signal — in all the
noise that emerges from Big Data.
The researchers noted in today's (Mar. 27)
issue of Scientific Reports that «Both the models and observations suggest this
signal has only recently emerged from the background
noise of natural variability.»
Most of the recent complations of borehole temepratures don't go back more than 500 years — presumably because of data quality and
signal - vs -
noise issues (but maybe someone could enlighten me?)
[Response: This is a real
issue, but for attribution purposes the
signal vs.
noise has to be determined using the models.
Now the
issue is of course whether there is a
signal at all, but assuming the whole structure of the input data is
noise makes the assumption that there is no
signal — thus it is somewhat circular.
As for additional topics, perhaps a brief explanation on why confidence in attribution (and prediction) of temperature change is strongest at large scales and weakest at small scales, ie something about the
issue of
signal to
noise relative to spatial scale.
Showing a mismatch between the real world and the observational data is made much easier if you recall the
signal - to -
noise issue we mentioned above.
Here's his response: «A convincing greenhouse gas - driven change has not emerged in the data so far, in my view, and may well be «in the
noise» due to both large natural variability (compared to the expected size of the greenhouse gas - driven
signal) and data quality
issues.»
While statistical studies on extremes are plagued by
signal - to -
noise issues and only give unequivocal results in a few cases with good data (like for temperature extremes), we have another, more useful source of information: physics.
Most of the recent complations of borehole temepratures don't go back more than 500 years — presumably because of data quality and
signal - vs -
noise issues (but maybe someone could enlighten me?)
This
issue arises in tree - ring chronology construction too, balancing the inclusion of more data to reduce the
noise (i.e. the sampling error) against the inclusion of data from too large an area such that the
signal becomes ambiguous or even incompatible.
On the other hand I do agree that the
issue is not really about
signal and
noise as the
noise is most commonly understood, but of oscillatory variability in the models, as it is almost certainly in the real Earth system as well.
This is the
issue addressed by Santer et al., searching for the AGW
signal amidst the natural variability
noise.
There are serious
signal to
noise issues and a core
issue is the significance of
signals «detected» in various experiments.
Which is the first commandment to follow, the pole star, the guiding
signal compared to which all else is
noise, the
issue to eclipse all
issues?
This is not perfect because it is likely that climate effects such as ocean currents and oscillations, changes in biology, ice extent and volume changes, cloud cover variations, etc... are causing a kind of climactic Brownian Motion, hiding the
signal in what, lacking deep understanding of these
issues, we can only call
noise.
My own version of the
signal - to -
noise issue is here, my display of year - end results from NASA GISS is here, and while I'm waiting for HadCRU and NCDC to post their year - end data I looked at northern - hemisphere land data from NASA here.
That way, as a client, I can tap into the one or two that are focused on my industry and my
issues, and choose
signal instead of
noise.