Minding the Weather: How Expert Forecasters Think - Hardcover

Hoffman, Robert R.; Ladue, Daphne S.; Mogil, H. Michael; Roebber, Paul J.; Trafton, J. Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262036061 ISBN 13: 9780262036061

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2017

Synopsis

A detailed study of research on the psychology of expertise in weather forecasting, drawing on findings in cognitive science, meteorology, and computer science.

This book argues that the human cognition system is the least understood, yet probably most important, component of forecasting accuracy. Minding the Weather investigates how people acquire massive and highly organized knowledge and develop the reasoning skills and strategies that enable them to achieve the highest levels of performance.

The authors consider such topics as the forecasting workplace; atmospheric scientists' descriptions of their reasoning strategies; the nature of expertise; forecaster knowledge, perceptual skills, and reasoning; and expert systems designed to imitate forecaster reasoning. Drawing on research in cognitive science, meteorology, and computer science, the authors argue that forecasting involves an interdependence of humans and technologies. Human expertise will always be necessary.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert R. Hoffman is Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida.

Review:

This is a landmark book. An in-depth account of expertise at its highest level. A fascinating and highly readable explanation of how experts take advantage of technology. Besides, who can resist an inside look at the work of weather forecasters? This book has been years in the making, years in the polishing, and is destined to take its place among the classics of scientific scholarship.

―Gary Klein, author of Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

Minding the Weather is a remarkable book! It discusses in great detail how individuals become weather forecasters, and beyond that, expert weather forecasters. It shows that weather forecasting is a continuous, lifelong learning process, which, if one learns the lessons being taught by the atmosphere, can lead to a high level of professional expertise. This book is for anyone responsible for educating, training, and employing weather forecasters.

―John T. Snow, Regents' Professor Emeritus of Meteorology, Dean Emeritus, College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences, University of Oklahoma

How are weather forecasters able to reveal the future? How does one become an expert? What does it mean to be an expert? These are just some of the questions that the authors pose in this excellent, all-encompassing book about weather forecasting and the minds of those who make the forecasts. Minding the Weather opens the brains of forecasters, peeks inside, and reveals how they think, how they make forecasts, and how they become experts.

―David M. Schultz, Professor of Synoptic Meteorology, University of Manchester; author of Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker and Atmospheric Scientist

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0262036061
• ISBN 13: 9780262036061
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 488