9/3/19 Report - Dorian Updates. Decision Making. Risk and Reward Evaluations. Other Weather.

Written by the TreasuireGuide for the exclusive use of treasurbeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Newest most recent update:  TV news is reporting that the bridges to South Hutchinson Island are open if you have two forms of ID showing that you are a resident or have a business on the island.

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Most recent update: DJ just said the Indian River Bridges are now open.

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DJ just sent me the following phone message from Indian River County EOC.

"Dorian Update Tuesday 10:00 AM

The Indian River County Emergency Operations Center expects sustained tropical storm force winds to reach our county in the next several hours. We have already experienced tropical storm force gusts. Hurricane force gusts are expected to accompany the sustained tropical storm force winds. We ask that the public remain off the roadways and businesses remain closed at this time. Bridges/Causeways remain closed at this time. FPL is reporting less than fifty residents without power at this time. Click here for more: http://goo.gl/itpxIt “

Thanks DJ.

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Cone at 8 AM Update.

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

This week has been a costly bust.  It feels like I just binge-watched a season of The Curse of Oak Island.  A lot of talk, a lot of mistakes, a lot of effort, and nothing out of the ordinary to show for it.  Today they'll be trying to cover up by convincing us that something really happened and it wasn't all a big mistake.

Of course, something did happen, but it wasn't to Florida.  Those poor people in the Bahamas got smashed.  And we were lucky that it didn't come our way.   It still could loop around or do something weird and get us, but that now seems very unlikely at best.

They say better safe than sorry, but there is a lot to be sorry about.  As I often say, there is always more than one type of mistake and as you become more cautious about one type, you'll probably increase the likelihood of the other type.

Take metal detecting.  If you increase your discrimination to miss junk, you'll also miss more good targets.  There are false positives and false negatives.  A false positive is getting a good signal but a junk target or no target.  A false negative would be no signal when there is really a good target present.  The thing is, you never find out about the good targets you missed, so it doesn't bother you.  People like to think they just don't miss anything, and it is easy to believe that because the evidence to the contrary doesn't present itself.

People don't realize the cost of preparing for a hurricane when it doesn't hit.  Last night all of the businesses were closed.  People lost income.  People were injured falling off ladders and cutting fingers while preparing for the hurricane that never arrived.  And all of the time, effort and expense that was put into preparing, could have gone into something more productive.  Not much will be made of it, but the mistake was very costly.

When guarding against one kind of outcome, you have to consider the results on both sides of the equation and determine if it is really worth it.  I'm not suggesting that we not prepare for hurricanes, but the REAL cost should be considered and weighed against the benefits.

It might sound like I'm just saying this because it looks like Dorian won't hit us, but that is not the case.  Just yesterday, when it looked like we could very possibly get hit much harder by Dorian, one person from the Sheriff's office, I think it was, made a comment on TV that aggravated me.   He said there was no reason for people to be out running around.  First, what does he know about your or my reasons, and second, how is he qualified to judge them.  I'd given them  a pass up to that point.  I hadn't even complained much about the needless beach closures.  I know there are reasons they don't want people out there, and to an extent it is for the public good, but it would be most convenient for them and perhaps safer for us if none of us were ever on the road or out in public, but  individuals deserve the right to make their own decisions and should also be willing to accept responsibility for the results of their actions.  The government should not be acting in loco parentis.  People should be allowed to make their own mistakes and when they make poor decisions and get in trouble, suffer the consequences without blaming anyone else.

I know it is difficult to predict weather, and I know that Dorian was an especially tough one.  I can't fault them for telling what could possibly happen.  I do think though that they should reconsider how they present information.  Perhaps they should not start putting so much emphasis on predictions that are very uncertain when a storm is still a week or more away.  At least emphasize the high rate of error at that point.  I know its a tough balancing act, and they can't predict it with a high degree of accuracy.  If they are too cautious one way, they increase the probability of the other type of error.  I'm just saying that I do not believe that the extreme cost of an entire state or multiple states preparing for a very uncertain event was fully considered in the decision making, especially when taking into account the high error rate when the event is days away.  And then there is the media that craves viewers and will do almost anything to get them.

At this point it looks like Florida dodged a bad storm.  The negative side of that is all of the cost and lost opportunity involved with preparing for an event that it now seems will not occur.

All of the things I'm talking about today apply directly to metal detecting.  The decision making process is very much the same.  The costs and risks of various types of errors  should be considered.

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Yesterday looked like what I call a "beachy" day.  It was cloudy, windy and rainy.  The wind was coming from the northeast and the white caps were building on the river.  That is the type of day I'd love to be out there.  

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

The surf is supposed to still be high but will be decreasing today.  The wind is now coming from the northwest.  That will blow the water out.

There are other things besides Dorian to watch now.

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

That is a very busy map.  Seven is supposed to go to Mexico.

I'll keep watching.  Hopefully they'll open the beaches so people other than NOAA and TV news reporters will be able to get out there.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/30/17 Report - Metal Detector Auditory Signals and Visual Displays - What They Won't Tell You. Beaches Today. Correction.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Here are a couple Treasure Coast beaches as seen this morning near low tide.  Not much to look at.  I saw no erosion other than a few inches here and there.  

There were a lot of new turtle nests.  Not much else of interest.

I could see one spot that looked like it might be worth detecting.  There were no cuts, but the beach had been receding there for quite a while.  I plan to get back to it some time in the future.

This Morning Near Low Tide.

Beach conditions remain basically unchanged.

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I apologize and resign.  I was wrong.  I think so anyway.

I went back and read an old post because I noticed that a lot of people were reading it after I referred to it in a more recent post.  After reading the old post, I was about to pull my hair out.  The post was about the fossil bone with a drilled hole and cut marks.  When I referred to that fossil in the old post, I talked like someone found the fossil and drilled and cut it.  I don't know why I believed that.  It is much more likely that the bone was drilled to obtain the bone marrow when it was fresh.  I remember Fred Dengler, my old buddy and fossil expert, telling me that at some point.  Why I believed it might have been drilled and cut after it was already fossilized is beyond me.  I guess it is remotely possible, but it just doesn't seem likely to me now, especially after remembering what Fred told me.

Maybe I shouldn't take it so hard.  You're supposed to live and learn, and if you never change your mind you probably aren't learning anything.  That is some consolation.  And it is sort of neat to think of having something that somebody cut and drilled maybe thousands of years ago.

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Which is best: listening to the auditory signal from your metal detector or watching a visual display?

First I want to make a few things clear.  There are a couple important basic concepts.  They are the concepts of sensation and perception.  I'll use the following definitions.  Sensation is input about the physical world registered by your sensory receptors such as the eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and skin.  Perception, on the other hand, is the process by which the brain selects, organizes, and interprets sensations; it is often influenced by learning, memory, emotions and expectations.  In other words, sensation occurs more in the sensory organs, while perception involves more brain.

The auditory and visual processing systems are very different.  The auditory system is a sequential processing system, while the visual system is a parallel processing system.  If you know about parallel processors in computers, you'll understand that.

To illustrate, if you are in a large room where a lot of conversations are taking place, you can only really listen to one at a time.  If you think you are listening to two conversations, you are probably sampling - taking bits from one then the other and then putting the conversations together from the samples you took from each.  That is sequential processing.  It is like a single stream of information flowing through one pipe or hole.

Vision involves parallel processing.  You can look at the entire room and see hundreds of people at once.  A lot of the processing is actually done in the retina before it is sent to the brain.  It is not so much like a small stream flowing through a small keyhole.  It is more like an entire screen. Not only do you see the forest but also all the trees.

Signals always occur in a field of noise.  There is internal and external noise.  The sound of the wind and waves would be examples of external noise, and tinnitus, ringing in the ears, is an example of internal noise.  You can also be distracted by various irrelevant sights and sounds.

Two of the most basic characteristics of sound is intensity, or loudness, and frequency, or pitch. When you listen to a metal detector signal, you will mostly be listening for a change in loudness and tone. The detector, of course, produces some noise. depending upon how well it is set up and how well you are using it.

When you watch a graphic display or meter, there can be a variety of types information displayed, most often including things like some indicator of target depth and the type of target.

Most people will probably get more useful information from detectors that provide visual displays. Some of the information can incorrect or misleading, but it will provide a good bit of useful information.

If I had a simple answer to the question I posed, I'd say that most people will probably find the visual information useful.  Visual displays can provide a lot of information.  Theoretically they can provide all the information of an auditory signal and more.  Although some submersible systems provide a light to indicate a signal, all of the major metal detectors provide an auditory signal.

The detector can do a lot of the processing for you and a visual display can provide a lot of really good information in an easy and meaningful form.

An auditory signal can also provide a lot of good information besides indicating if a target is present or not.  I like reading ground effects.  You can do that if you don't balance or set up your detector to eliminate all ground signals.

I do want to say, however, that some people can learn to extract a lot of information from an auditory signal - perhaps much more than you might think, but it does require both a keen aptitude and a lot of experience.

In the end, the user still has to make good decisions.  No metal detector can make the most important decision for you.  It will not tell you where to put your coil.  If you don't put your coil over good targets, none of that other information matters. A lot of the information for that important decision will come from visually scanning the landscape and referring to your acquired knowledge base.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net