IEM Daily Feature
Thursday, 27 August 2015

January Comparables

Posted: 27 Aug 2015 05:22 AM

The low temperature yesterday for Ames dipped to 46 degrees. How does one compare that value to other months? Having a low of 46 in January would be very balmy. One way to compare is to construct a quantile - quantile plot as shown by the featured chart. You effectively sample the percentiles from each distribution and then plot them against each other. You can then compare one temperature against another and so the 46 in August becomes a -18 in January! There is your comparable!

Voting:
Good = 19
Bad = 11
Abstain = 5