The need for communication skills in the meteorological private sector

In 1995, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) conducted a survey of the private sector members of the AMS. The results, published in the Bulletin of the AMS, substantiate the importance of teaching communication skills in colleges and universities. The top three jobs performed by the professional meteorologists were broadcasting, general consulting, and weather information/communications. The […]

“PowerPoint makes us stupid.”

This story is from The New York Times about how PowerPoint has been used (or banned, in some cases) from military meetings and briefings. “We have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint.”

Eloquent Science won an EXCEL Award

From Sarah Jane Shangraw, AMS Books Managing Editor: Eloquent Science has won an EXCEL award from Association Media & Publishing. Each year the Association, formerly known as the Society of National Association Publishers, bestows EXCEL awards in several categories of media and publication, including two book categories: technical and non-technical. Within each category they award […]

Proper spellings of atmospheric science words

Did you know that shortwave radiation is not hyphenated, but short-wave trough is? Did you know that air mass is two words when used as a noun, but one word when used as an adjective (e.g., airmass modification)? If you are ever wondering how scientific words are spelled or used, the American Meteorological Society has […]

Bad Writing and Bad Thinking

Russ Schumacher pointed me to this article from the The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Bad Writing and Bad Thinking” by Rachel Toor. Call me simple-minded, call me anti-intellectual, but I believe that most poor scholarly writing is a result of bad habits, of learning tricks of the academic trade as a way to try to […]

Terrible use of jargon

———————————————————- 2010-04-05 The Future of Family Science Stan J. Knapp of Brigham Young University conditionally prognosticates a jargon-free future for his fellow family scientists: “Authorizing Family Science: An Analysis of the Objectifying Practices of Family Science Discourse,” Stan J. Knapp, Journal of Marriage and Family, vol. 64, no. 4 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1038-1048. . Knapp […]

Edward Tufte and kittens

Thanks to Mark Goetz!

A figure in need of help

I ran across this figure from an American Meteorological Society journal article recently. It’s just a simple scatterplot, which is so easy to construct, yet this figure has so many problems. 1. False alarm ratio and probability of detection are both quantities that can have values between 0 and 1, but the x axis ranges […]

Scott Adams on criticism

This quote could be applied to the review process… “If there is one thing you should always seek in a job, it’s the opportunity to criticize people who are more skilled than you are. This kind of work is both satisfying and easy.” —Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert

Bob The Angry Flower: It’s vs Its