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what global warming will look like with dead-on accuracy, said climate computer modeler Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
• For computer models to make predictions, three things are needed: computer power, mathematical formulas designed to mirror real world cause-and-effects and current conditions converted into numbers that can be used in formulas.
• Experts input the data of current conditions into the formulas that say if X and Y happen, then it will produce Z. Then the computers run those what-if simulations over and over again, with slight variations changing the end results. These scenarios are run tens of thousands of times, giving a whole range of outcomes.
• The key is seeing what happens most often and why. It's not a dead-on prediction, but breaks down the future into probabilities.
• "It's essentially solving equations that are too extensive to solve with pencil and paper," Weaver explained.
• It all comes down to collecting data, crunching it and spitting out probabilities. It's evidence turned into numbers. It's math.
• Experts believe it's the future.
• Silver said what he did with the election was nothing compared with what meteorologists did with Sandy, which was a matter of "real life-and-death consequences."
• The National Weather Service forecast an extremely rare due-west turn by the storm into southern New Jersey, he said. "It's astounding. That's a huge win for computer modeling."
• Silver's bold predictions that Obama would win upset some political pundits who predicted a Romney victory, based on what they perceived as momentum, the enthusiasm of crowds, gut instinct and partisanship.
• But Silver was right, besting his 2008 record of getting 49 of 50 states right for president.
• "This is a victory for the stuff (computer modeling) in politics," he said Thursday in a telephone interview. "It doesn't mean we're going to solve world peace with a computer. It doesn't mean we're going to be able predict earthquakes ... but we can chip away at the margins."
• One of the next fields Silver said he'd like to get into is education because he feels that all the data being generated "is not being used in the best way."
• "I hope that people focus not on me personally, but what I'm trying to do," Silver said.
• What he and his colleagues are trying to do is take a chaotic world and make sense of it, turn events into equations to be solved.

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