HydroGuy
A Pirate's Life For Me
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2005
I'm an engineer and a lover of math, so I appreciate your study of this. You have unquestionably proven that a TP 9 and 10 cannot mean what they have defined it to mean. However, you admit that some of those days that were labeled as 9's or 10's were probably 8's. If I'm planning, I really only care about large differences between say a 3 and an 8. I really don't care about small differences like an 8 vs. a 9. If they are getting within 10% of the right number, I still say there is value in that. Nobody is going to say, "I'm was going to go to the park if it was an 8, but I'm staying home because it's a 9."
You also don't really provide any proof that the data isn't correct with respect to relativity on a short term. For instance, I'm going to be in SoCal for 10 days, but only going to DL for 5. To me, I care more about which of those 5 are the lowest 5 days, and less about whether those days are 5's, 7's or whatever. If they help me correctly choose the best 5 days, the site has done it's job.
Now while you haven't disproved these things, I suppose they also haven not been proven true by any study either. It's kind of a hard thing to quantify either way, given that Disney doesn't release turnstile numbers and ride wait times for certain rides can fluctuate for lots of non-attendance reasons. Also, given that you proved there was one flaw in their method, one could assume the rest of their analysis could be equally flawed. So I guess my takeaway is that your finding is interesting and there is reason to be skeptical of TP's numbers. But given few if any other superior predictive sites out there, I would still use them over going blind, especially for someone like me who does not have the number of trips under his belt like you do.
Thanks for the feedback.
I guess I am saying a couple things with this thread...
If they got this most fundamental part of their prediction wrong then it shows a disturbing lack of rigor that to me calls everything into question they say.
It causes an emotional response in folks that is disproportionate. People are scared by 9's and 10's and maybe say "wow, my trip will be miserabe" or "there is no way I will go to DLR on those days". Even if we assume that TP is relatively correct (e.g., a 9 day is worse than a 7 day even if it is not really a 9 or a 7 because of their lack of rigor) the fact remains that some of the days they are calling 9 or 10 must be a 7 (because 33% of the days are 9 or 10 days when only 20% can be - so some of those must be 7's and 8's even when they say they are 9 or 10). In my book a 7 is not that bad. But a 9 or 10 sounds really packed. That is a huge flaw.
Folks on this forum use their dates to try to avoid 9 or 10 days (by TP account) and feel good about themselves when they can plan their vacation for 6 or 7 days (by TP account). But what is the impact if the days they avoided and thought were 9 or 10 but were in fact a 7 - but maybe with long park hours 8AM-Midnight at DL - and instead went on a TP 7 ranked day with park hours of 9AM-10PM? They traded barely lower crowds for a day with much lower park hours. They got messed up by TP big time.