User talk:William M. Connolley

Reverting changes in the article about Chaos theory

Dear @William M. Connolley, I agree with you that the article I cited focuses primarily on parameter estimation. Nevertheless, the sentence I inserted was taken (and appropriately modified) from Section IV of that work, which is dedicated to the interpretation and application of power law distribution analyses to risk assessments. Regarding the credibility of the cited article, I think it is supported by the fact that Chaos, a Journal of the American Institute of Physics, is one of the top-rated journals in its field. Also, quite some time has passed since its publication, long enough that any concerns from readers, authors, or scientists could have been raised (usually the deadline for proposing/opposing a comment is about two months). So, from my (purely personal) point of view, the source should be considered valid. We discussed the addition of the text I inserted, over the last two weeks on the talk page with other Wikipedia editors. One of them, Johnjbarton (I guess a senior editor), suggested I include it at the end of the Chaos Theory article. Frankly, I expected a comment or suggestion on the talk page during this period rather than my contribution being deleted. In any case, I think it's worth explaining somewhere in this article that, for several phenomena explained by chaos theory, deterministic prediction is very difficult, while probabilistic prediction can provide useful information. This approach has been used for decades in fields such as earthquake engineering and finance. I'd be grateful if you could provide me with some guidance. Thank you for your attention. MadameButterfly96 (talk) 02:08, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The chaos article needs cleanup and attracts... unfortunate contributions. I don't think your primary source is suitable; and like I said, your quote appears to misrepresent the article itself, as I'm judging from the abstract William M. Connolley (talk) 12:30, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]