How not to evaluate a weather forecast

When I was a kid in the '70s, weather forecasting really wasn't very good, but sophisticated computer modeling has improved it much more than the human ability to gauge its accuracy. I'm not a meteorologist, but I did read a chapter in a book about it: Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise : Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don't (2012). And, of course, the great thing about weather forecasts is that their accuracy can easily by measured after the fact: here's a study which concludes another inescapable fact about human endeavours: you get what you pay for.

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The Myth of Criticism

Sources:

Studies showing praise is more effective than criticism: see the bibliography at http://www.parentingscience.com/effects-of-praise.html. (Note that it’s not that simple: different kinds of praise are more effective than others, some kinds of praise can be counterproductive, and some kinds of criticism can be productive.)

Studies outlining the bias that leads us to believe negative feedback is more effective than positive feedback:
•    P. E. Schaffner (1985) Specious learning about reward and punishment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1377-86
•    D. Kahneman & A. Tversky (1973) On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80, 237-51
•    Tversky & D. Kahneman (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-31

Dish soap > vinegar > honey for catching flies: http://homeeconomics101.dreamwidth.org/11927.html, http://boingboing.net/2010/09/22/fly-trap-made-from-v.html

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