According to weather forecasts across Japan this evening, tomorrow there will be a 50% chance of rain. Whoopie-do! What’s that supposed to mean? Should I take an umbrella? Should I hang out my laundry? I don’t know, and neither do the students I asked.
Believe it or not, I was once asked to leave a bar in Nagoya because I got into a ‘heated debate’ about how meaningless the Japanese kousuikakuritsu figures are. Kousuikakuritsu means ‘the chance of rain’, and I just can’t understand the point of it. All we need to know is whether or not it’s going to rain, right? Surely the weather forecasters are paid to tell us exactly that. I mean, anyone can look at the sky and say it ‘might’ rain.
One thing you’ll notice in the summer months, despite weeks of dryness, is how they almost always state that there’s a ten percent chance of rain… just so they can’t be wrong!
To be honest, it’s not so much the sillyness of such figures that bugs me, but more the fact that no-one else can see how silly they are! Am I really alone here? Someone, anyone, please agree with me before this drives me insane!
