Big Fig Newton Statistics

I've looked for this in the past, without luck.

The Big Fig Newton


Today stumbled across it, posted in a blog's comments.

You should read that blog post too. I've thought for a long time that the smoothing of data by climatologists make the significance of their results look much stronger than they really are. Now it looks like a statistician is pointing that out. Why in the world did it take so long for an expert to speak up? If it was obvious to a non-expert like me, it should have been obvious to them.

If the climatologist results are significant, then it shouldn't be necessary to smooth the data. The fact they the do smooth makes me skeptical about their results.

Now if only someone would explain the need to correct the data for "anomalies."