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677 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-24-My NOAA story


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Introduction: I recently learned we have some readers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration so I thought I’d share an old story. About 35 years ago my brother worked briefly as a clerk at NOAA in their D.C. (or maybe it was D.C.-area) office. His job was to enter the weather numbers that came in. He had a boss who was very orderly. At one point there was a hurricane that wiped out some weather station in the Caribbean, and his boss told him to put in the numbers anyway. My brother protested that they didn’t have the data, to which his boss replied: “I know what the numbers are.” Nowadays we call this sort of thing “imputation” and we like it. But not in the raw data! I bet nowadays they have an NA code.


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1 I recently learned we have some readers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration so I thought I’d share an old story. [sent-1, score-0.43]

2 About 35 years ago my brother worked briefly as a clerk at NOAA in their D. [sent-2, score-0.839]

3 His job was to enter the weather numbers that came in. [sent-7, score-0.743]

4 At one point there was a hurricane that wiped out some weather station in the Caribbean, and his boss told him to put in the numbers anyway. [sent-9, score-1.636]

5 My brother protested that they didn’t have the data, to which his boss replied: “I know what the numbers are. [sent-10, score-1.251]

6 ” Nowadays we call this sort of thing “imputation” and we like it. [sent-11, score-0.182]


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