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Scoring Rules And Decision Analysis Education, J. Eric Bickel
Scoring Rules And Decision Analysis Education, J. Eric Bickel
Eric Bickel
Experiential learning is perhaps the most effective way to teach. One example is the scoring procedure used for exams in some decision analysis programs. Under this grading scheme, students take a multiple-choice exam, but rather than simply marking which answer they think is correct, they must assign a probability to each possible answer. The exam is then scored with a special scoring rule, under which students’ best strategy is to avoid guessing and instead assign their true beliefs. Such a scoring function is known as a strictly proper scoring rule. In this paper, we discuss several different scoring rules and …
Comparing Nws Pop Forecasts To Third-Party Providers, J. Eric Bickel, Eric Floehr, Seong Dae Kim
Comparing Nws Pop Forecasts To Third-Party Providers, J. Eric Bickel, Eric Floehr, Seong Dae Kim
Eric Bickel
In this paper, the authors verify probability of precipitation (PoP) forecasts provided by the National Weather Service (NWS), The Weather Channel (TWC), and CustomWeather (CW). The n-day-ahead forecasts, where n ranges from 1 to 3 for the NWS, from 1 to 9 for TWC, and from 1 to 14 for CW, are analyzed. The dataset includes almost 13 million PoP forecasts, or about 500 000 PoPs per provider per day of lead time. Data were collected over a 2-yr period (1 November 2008–31 October 2010) at 734 observation stations across the contiguous United States. In addition to verifying these PoP …
Verification Of The Weather Channel Probability Of Precipitation Forecasts, Eric Bickel, Seong Kim
Verification Of The Weather Channel Probability Of Precipitation Forecasts, Eric Bickel, Seong Kim
Eric Bickel
The Weather Channel (TWC) is a leading provider of weather information to the general public. In this paper the reliability of their probability of precipitation (PoP) forecasts over a 14-month period at 42 locations across the United States is verified. It is found that PoPs between 0.4 and 0.9 are well calibrated for near-term forecasts. However, overall TWC PoPs are biased toward precipitation, significantly so during the warm season (April–September). PoPs lower than 0.3 and above 0.9 are not well calibrated, a fact that can be explained by TWC’s forecasting procedure. In addition, PoPs beyond a 6-day lead time are …
Some Comparisons Among Quadratic, Spherical, And Logarithmic Scoring Rules, Eric Bickel
Some Comparisons Among Quadratic, Spherical, And Logarithmic Scoring Rules, Eric Bickel
Eric Bickel
Strictly proper scoring rules continue to play an important role in probability assessment. Although many such rules have been developed, relatively little guidance exists as to which rule is the most appropriate. In this paper, we discuss two important properties of quadratic, spherical, and logarithmic scoring rules. From an ex post perspective, we compare their rank order properties and conclude that both quadratic and spherical scoring perform poorly in this regard, relative to logarithmic. Second, from an ex ante perspective, we demonstrate that in many situations, logarithmic scoring is the method least affected by a nonlinear utility function. These results …