Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 February 9

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February 9

Why is 'windy' a separate category of weather?

Whenever you look at weather forecasts, some days are shown as 'windy.' For some reason, past a certain windspeed, weather services refuse to tell you how cloudy it is and simply tell you that it's 'windy' outside. At what windspeed is a day no longer considered 'sunny' or 'cloudy' and considered 'windy' instead? Why is 'windy' a category of weather in a league of its own, as opposed to, say, 'windy and sunny' or 'rain with wind?' There may not be a concrete or rational reason behind this sort of classification because I cannot find a thing on it, but there must have been a precedent set at some point among meteorologists that weather forecasting should be done this way. 92.6.179.220 (talk) 11:17, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

You aren't going to find any information on why a particular weather service chooses to use certain words on certain days. Roughly speaking, they are going to use the terms most relevant to you in making decisions about your outdoor activities for the day, and at some point, the speed of wind becomes high enough that it becomes worth reporting on. The amount of sun vs. clouds perhaps less so on day when the wind is significant. Ultimately, however, the reports are written by people who make subjective decisions on what information is worth leading with. --Jayron32 13:39, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I would challenge that. For certain types of forecast or weather report, wind, precipitation, visibility, etc will all always be reported, and in a specific order: see METAR and Terminal aerodrome forecast. Now, these reports and forecasts are intended for specialist use, and encoded in a way that most people would find incomprehensible (example: METAR LBBG 041600Z 12012MPS 090V150 1400 R04/P1500N R22/P1500U +SN BKN022 OVC050 M04/M07 Q1020 NOSIG 8849//91= - see the article for a translation), so forecasts aimed at the general public will be descriptive and in plain English. But I would expect each met office or weather service will have rules or at least guidelines on how these should be presented and what details included. Now, how to find out what these rules are may be tricky, but it shouldn't be an inherently impossible task. Iapetus (talk) 11:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to that and I suspect that Jayron is correct. I will note that it feels like winter-weather forecasts have tried to combine wind more directly into their announcements, for example calling for snowsqualls if there will be wind included and using the relatively newer term snow shower if there is not. It's also possible that warm-weather discussions about sunny versus cloudy have partly been taken over by a separate UV index value. Matt Deres (talk) 15:26, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Not only are the numerical data of weather forecasts produced by supercomputers, but the texts in which they are reported to the public are now also often produced by software.^[1] Descriptions of applications for natural-language news generation have appeared as conference papers.^[2] To obtain a specific instantiation of the application, the parameters for the categorization conditions needed to verbalize the data in human-consumable form will have to be supplied. One should expect these also then to be chosen such, as suggested by Jayron, that the reports as produced serve the needs of the customer. For reports meant to serve the general public, that should ideally correspond to the terminology a layperson would use when describing the weather conditions to a peer. As to computer-generation of weather reports, I think it should be possible to train an AI application, feeding it a large data set consisting of numerical forecasts with corresponding human-produced texts.  --Lambiam 09:20, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Request dated January 28, thanks

Good evening, I submitted a request last January 28th; is there someone who can help me, who can give me an answer to my question? It is the first request: "the precicnt count" so to speak. Thank you very much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.100.198 (talk) 21:36, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 January 28 § Precinct count card reader (last illustration)

PrimeHunter (talk) 21:49, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

The text describing the operation of the "precinct count card reader" is from one panel of an on-line exhibition at the Smithsonian with the title Vote: The Machinery of Democracy. I found another slightly different (earlier?) version of the texts on these panels,^[3] for an exhibition Voices and Votes. I find that other version clearer. Here it is:

Precinct count card reader, 2008

With this machine, ballots may be counted up to four times, and in four ways.

(1) An antenna transmits the tally to a central location electronically.

(2) The machine prints the tally on paper tape.

(3) The transmitted tally and the tape tally can be checked against the machine’s memory cartridge.

(4) The ballots can be counted by hand.

Courtesy of National Museum of American History

So these are not four steps taken one by one, but four alternative ways in which the ballots can be counted. The only reasonable use would have been that after successfully reading an inserted card, the vote was considered to have been cast. (Displaying the vote as read and asking for confirmation would be a reasonable additional step, but, judging from the image, the hardware does not appear to have been designed for that.) It is not possible to deduce from the text or the image what happened to a card after it had been inserted and scanned. One obvious possibility is that it was retained within the apparatus, which would make it physically impossible to have the same card counted twice. The logo on the machine identifies it as a product of Election Systems & Software. If you need further information, I suggest that you contact them directly.  --Lambiam 07:55, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

All of these processes are, in fact, done. Here is how it went in the precinct I worked with similar machines. The memory card is in the machine before the election and checked with a complete set of valid sample ballots and the machine certified. During voting, the machine accepts ballots that match the sample ballots. If not the ballot is rejected and the voter can fix it or void it and get a new ballot to vote. The cast ballots are stored inside the machine during voting hours. After the poll closes, the machine is set to transmit to the central authorities (both county and city) and it also prints out a tape. The number of total votes listed on the tape is checked against the total votes shown on the machine's display. The tapes are signed by the election workers; the precinct chairman then unlocks both the memory card and ballot storage compartments. The memory card is removed and both the card and tape are placed in a bag with a physical seal. The ballots are removed from the machine and sealed in another bag. The embossed numbers on the metal seals are recorded on separate paperwork; this process is witnessed by election workers with allegiance to both of the major national parties. The ballots, tape, and memory card are taken by at least two election workers to the central election headquarters and checked in with more paperwork. Rmhermen (talk) 17:26, 13 February 2021 (UTC)