Are Warm years the Result of Chance?

“It’s so damn hot… milk was a bad choice.”
- Ron Burgundy, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Climate Change or Global warming if you prefer is all around us, in the news, debated over coffee and basically infiltrating our lives. One of the evidences used to illustrate that global warming is really occurring is that over the last 120 years or so, since 1880, the global temperature has been recorded each year and it has been found that 9 of the hottest years recorded have been in the last ten years and 17 of the hottest years have been in the last 20 years. Before we look at that though what does it mean to have a global temperature for a given year? First I should point out the difference between weather and climate, when you lie out in the Sun and get a tan, that’s weather, when you spiral into an Ice Age, that’s climate.

Or to put it another way, weather is something that happens over short times scales in localized areas whereas climate is a more distributed phenomenon that takes both long periods of time and large scale swaths of the countryside, or in this case the entire planet. So to arrive at a global temperature and gauge climate the temperature must be taken at different times and places and averaged out. So once we have this pool of data what can we tell from it? Weather as we all know is incredibly chaotic and it seems almost anything can happen despite the best efforts of our ever untrusty weatherpersons to predict, as anyone who has attempted to plan an outdoor event knows.

So isn’t there a high probability that this cluster of high temperatures recently is just bad luck? Couldn’t it just happen by chance? If Only I could do the math….As luck would have it, I don’t have to a recently published paper in Geophysical Research Letters has crunched the numbers for me. According to Scientists at the GKSS Research Centre of Geesthacht and the University of Bernthe odds of this happening simply by chance is less than 1:1000, and that’s on the optimistic side the odds are probably closer to 1:10,000. The example given is that this is like flipping a coin and getting heads 14 times in a row, I thought this was a boring example so here are some other things that have the same odds : The chance of a horse giving birth to healthy twins, Finding a four leaf clover on the first try, that you will be injured by a toilet this year and in 2004 bookmakers estimated the chance of finding life on Titan at 10,000 to 1.

Resources

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL036228.shtml

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090109115047.htm

http://www.mos.org/events_activities/podcasts&d=3129

Superstition Arises from Powerlessness

I’ve written before about the connection between superstitious thinking and feelings of powerlessness, now there is a study that looked at exactly that. Previous connections have mostly been anecdotal or based on the behaviour of people in the real world. In this study the researchers induced a sense of lack of control in participants and then measured how likely they were to report connections between unrelated events or see patterns in noise.

Subjects were preconditioned in at least two ways to create these feelings, in one scenario they were given a task to complete with the help of feedback from a computer, half of the subjects received meaningful feedback that allowed them to complete the task successfully and the other half received random feedback that left them confused. In another experiment the subjects were asked to relate an experience in their lives, again half were to relate an experience were they were in control and the other half one were they were powerless.

Those subjects that that been preconditioned to simulate powerlessness in their lives were more likely than their confident counterparts to see patterns in pictures of “Snow” and more likely to connect unrelated sequences of events. For example in one experiment the subjects read short stories in which superstitious behaviour such as “Knocking on wood” or stamping three times preceded favourable outcomes such as success at work. These subjects were more likely to see a causal relation between these events and to express fear of what might happen if these behaviours were not repeated in future.

Fortunately the researchers also found that self affirming techniques such as focusing on a positive personal value could restore a sense of control and reduce superstitious and false pattern-seeking behaviour. So next time you feel the need to slip into your lucky underwear before an important meeting, just think about how awesome you are instead. That’s what I do.

Resources

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5898/115

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/msl-wsi092608.php

http://bhascience.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-connects-superstition-conspiracy.html

http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/mccombs-today/2008/10/whitson-in-science-loss-of-control-behind-superstitions-rituals-conspiracy-theories/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081003-loss-of-control-may-leave-us-looking-for-four-leaf-clovers.html

Luck

Do you feel lucky? Ever walk under ladders? Have a lucky charm? Think bad events happen in threes? Knock on Wood? Pull a wishbone? Cross your fingers? The invention of the concept of luck is likely a combination of people’s attempt to control a world in which they feel powerless and our ability to see and remember causal associations between actions. Being able to see what long-term effects our actions have on the world is an advantage but this can lead to seeing causation where there is none. Luck is a special case of this, if a string of bad things happen to us there must be a cause, right? Conversely if bad events are caused then so are good ones, if something has a cause then we may be able to influence it. Hence charms, rituals and idiosyncratic actions to help our chances of getting good luck.

By connecting our actions to effects in the larger world we can effectively carry out our daily business, live, work, play and generally function in society. This ability however leaves us open to seeing causal connections where there are not only none but absolutely no chance of one. Thus athletes see a connection between their underwear and the outcome of a game, tourists to Hawaii become convinced of a curse on lava rocks and people throw salt over their shoulders. The fact that random events occur all the time means that there is a high chance that you will do something unusual or that sticks in your mind right before an actual meaningful event. Those among us who are prone to do so may see a relationship between the two.

Amazing things happen every day to someone, it would be more amazing if they didn’t. I prefer the attitude of the following quote: “Luck is probability taken personally.” Chip Denman – statistician

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck

http://skepdic.com/superstition.html

http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps09.html