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24-09-2003, 12:21 PM

In article ,
(Steve Harris) writes:
| In article ,
| (Franz Heymann) wrote:
|
| I doubt if they run millions of simulations for one situation. If
| they did, it might take them a year to produce tomorrow's forecast
|
| They have quite powerful computers these days and lots of them.

They still don't run millions of simulations for one situation.
And the effect of numerical instability isn't just in terms of
small variations in the input, but is in the calculations
themselves. Despite the pop mathematics publications, the causes
and problems of computational chaos (in this sense) have been well
understood for over a century.

That being said, your posting was considerably more on the ball
than "J C-W"'s. I wish him the joy of Penrose's writings - but
going into the latter's eccentricities is definitely off-group.
Let it suffice to say that his quantum theories have found almost
no followers among scientists and mathematicians, however popular
they are with the lay press.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.