Over dozen people have already entered their projections for August’s UAH TLT temperature; (entry form here.) It’s now time to discuss the Quatloo distribution scheme.
As some noticed, I have organized things so that people can wager between 1 and 5 Quatloos on their predictions. However, I had not decided how to distribute the Quatloos. This is the tentative plan:
- Once the poll is closed, I create a pool by debiting the Quatloos each person bet and throwing that money into the Quatloo pool.
- When Roy posts the correct UAH temperature reading, I rank all entries by absolute value of the difference between their bet and Roy’s posted value. The time stamp will be used to break ties.
- The over all winner will be the person whose bet came closest to Roy’s posted value. That person will be awarded the smaller of [(2* their wager) or (the total number of Quatloos in the pool)]. The amount they are awarded will be subtracted from the pool. (The net effect is their account gains the number of Quatloos they bet.)
- The person with in second place will be awarded the smaller of [( 2*0.751*their wager) or (the total number of Quatloos remaining in the pool)]. The amount they are awarded will be subtracted from the pool.
- The person in the “nth” place will be awarded the smaller of [( 2*0.75(n-1)*their wager) or (the total number of Quatloos in the pool)]. The amount they are awarded will be subtracted from the pool.
- If any money remains in the pool after lowest rank person gets their cut, the remainder will be given to the person with the closest prediction.
This scheme passes around all the Quatloos, awards people for having the confidence to bet the whole 5 Quatloos, and also award people for accurate projections. Everyone starts off with a zero Quatloo balance. At various times, participants may be in the black or red.
Should “not” be “now”?
BTW, in case you are wondering, I didn’t make a prediction because, despite my surprising accuracy last time, I actually forgot the methodology I used! 🙁
Plus, I spent all my Quatloos on something else already (actually, I really did just order a book-Pat Michael’s and Robert Balling’s “Climate of Extremes” which should arrive in a few days! Yay!)
Andrew_FL… what? Me? commit typo? (Thanks, fixed.)
I’m sure you can get someone to advance you some Quatloos at a reasonable rate of interest. The poll isn’t closed yet. If you remember your method of predicting temperatures, you still can.
What on earth is a Quatloo?
whats happened to your ice bets this year looks like melt may have actually stopped August 2009!
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice_ext.png
Does not like like being even close to 2008 and may veer back to normal if so it will be very interesting to analize the AGW analysis of this (if it does happen). Guessing that the re-icing this year will be a clincher (re like last years was quite rapid and complete).
David,
I googled and found this forum entry: http://www.gamedevblog.com/2009/07/clarification-quatloos-vs-mandays.html
“Quatloo is from Star Trek: TOS, “The Masters of Triskelion” later parodied on the Simpsons when Burns bets quatloos on the newcomer. Not intended to be pejorative: I still measure projects in quatloos myself (well, “Torpex Work Units”, I call them), multiplying by various fudge factors to try and get a date and budget.”
All climate blog bets are in Quatloos.
VG– Wishful thinking. . .
VG: don’t count your melt season before its over. After all, early August bumps have happened in the past.
E.g. http://wcg.userfriendly.org/etc/false_hope2008.png
(and sorry for the slight snarkyness of it :-p )
“VG: don’t count your melt season before its over. After all, early August bumps have happened in the past. ”
Translation: “Melt ice, melt! Please, please, PLEASE melt!” 😉
I too, apologize for the snark.
Andrew
Andrew_KY, When my family moved to Chicago, we kids who had spent the previous years in El Salvador, would decree that winter was over during the the 70F days in March. My Dad would tell us that we would have snow before March ended.
Dad was always right.
Don’t count the melt over until September.
Hey, I hear an ice-free arctic would be a bonanza for oil and gas production…
I wonder if that would count as a feedback?
Lucia,
My point is NOT that I believe it’s not going to melt anymore. In fact, the melt of any ice at any particular time is irrelevant to me. It can melt away completely for all it matters.
My point IS that I detect the desire in some warmers that the ice melt. It is evidence for their belief system. They Want the ice to melt. That is my point and nothing else.
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
Yeah, but these accusations are pointless and could be hurled in any and all directions.
It may well be that some warmers will feel some pleasure in being right. This is true even if they think it would be better for AGW to be false.
By the same token, having posted on believing the multi-model mean is outside the range consistent with data, to some extent, I sort of hope this El Nino will stall just as the 2007 El Nino stalled.
But, what will be will be. VG’s suggestion the ice has stopped melting is premature. Zeke is correct to point this out. Maybe the cartoon was a bit much… but still. It’s highly unlikely the ice has stopped melting.
Maybe Zeke will tell us if he wants the ice to melt or not, or it doesn’t matter to him. Or perhaps he just wants the lines on a chart to bend a certain way…
Andrew
Andrew (KY),
I do not want the ice to melt, since it would likely have a number of negative effects on the surrounding ecosystem, speed up some unfortunate albedo-related feedbacks, etc. That said, given my understanding of past changes in sea ice and global temperature, I expect that this year’s sea ice melt will be fairly significant (definitely not below 2007, probably not below 2008 either, but still well below the trend prior to 2007). Thus I find VG’s comment that sea ice “may veer back to normal” highly unlikely.
If sea ice were to make a dramatic recovery, it would cause me to examine my assumptions to some extent, at least if there were no readily observable physical anomalies responsible for said recovery. However, until that occurs, my expectation of sea ice behavior is predicated on past trends.
There is a significant difference between expecting to see something (from a scientific sense) and wanting to see something (from a moral or political sense).
Thanks Zeke,
Your link seemed to contain more than just Detached Science. 😉
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
Of course Zeke’s link to the image wasn’t detached science. This is a blog, it’s not 100% detached science.
Well then I guess Zeke’s position = Detached Science + Value Added Product. 😉
Andrew
The link was intended as a joke, as its a bit too snarky for my taste (and I dislike the whole “denialist” vs. “alarmist” polarization in general).
That said, there is a tendency at Anthony’s place and others to draw a few too many conclusions from day to day blips in the data.
Zeke,
I agree with you that too many conclusions are drawn, all the way across the board, on this topic.
Andrew
Based on JAXA the extent loss will continue for at least another month. Thats been true of every year since 2003. It is also true that the loss rate is decreasing for all those years from here on out. This years rate had been below average for the last 10 days or so, but it was above average for about the previous 10.
As for the chart just change the comments and it becomes a dig at alarmist.
Zeke: your:
.
Hey, I hear an ice-free arctic would be a bonanza for oil and gas production
.
Not really. We were working up there in the 60s-80s, and used ice platforms to work from. The longer the ice is there, the longer we could work.
.
Lucia,
The house should keep a least 10%, otherwise how can you fund the free drinks?
Jeff Id–
But if I do that, in the long run, everyone is going to end up with negative numbers of quatloos. With the set up discussed in the post, the average number of quatloos will be zero.
By the way, we’re up to 29 participants.
When will betting close? I’d like to hold off till the last minute and collect some of the quatloos.
I just love to stir the warmistas horn nest up. Its a pretty wild veerage but it should of course should continue to melt until September.. but who knows! My view that it is ALL within normal deviations climatically (1000 years)… even 2007
Jeff–
The script is scheduled to close at midnight on the 17th. (I don’t know if that’s Greenwich or California time.)
You can bet now and update later. I’ve written the award part of the script to look at the most recent time stamp for any email address entered and use only that for the purpose of betting. I figured this lets people get bets in without risking not getting any in at all.
Haha! Jeff getting in on the betting action . . .
Ryan,
Before it was for nothing, now that quatloos are involved everything is different. I’m trying to get Roy Spencer to help me set up his code and get access to real time data. Either that or I’ll need to bribe you. Whatever’s easier.
If you’re nice, I’ll let you know what my guess was and how I arrived at it. 😀
I’m curious what the current rate of exchange is to convert quatloos to brownies….
Have the Quatloos been distributed yet?
Robert: Quatloos will not be distributed until after the UAH temperature for August are reported. Roy Spencer generally reports these the first week of the following month.