"Ask Jimmy" may actually be a perfectly scientific way to go about it. Jimmy
may be a person of longstanding experience in the field (see Lois McMaster
Bujold's story "Weatherman" for an example of how that works) or Jimmy may
have an unusual ability which cannot be duplicated or examined but which has
proven empirically reilable.
Speaking of "weatherman" -
I was reading one of these far-ranging anecdotal histories that included a
bit about the captain of the Beagle. That's right, Darwin's ship. Admiral
FitzRoy decided to try predicting the weather using barometer readings,
using the telegraph for communications. The results were spotty; the London
papers made merciless fun of him; he slit his throat.
Scientific forecasting had to wait a couple of generations, until Lewis Fry
Richardson published "Weather Predictionsby Numerical Process" in 1922,
working backwards from the measurements via differential equations. His
math was sound, but there was no way to realize it short of hiring several
thousand clerks with pencils and slide rules - an effort nobody could or
would put out until World War II, when the "thousands of clerks" model was
used for breaking German codes.
Of course, when computers came along....
But still, in Lois' story, all the advanced technology of Camp Permafrost
was still less accurate that the weather sense of a drunken soldier exiled
to this arctic base years before. Sounds accurate to me!
http://idiotgrrl.livejournal.com/
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