![]() There have been a rash of break-ins in South County.The Snow Day Calculator takes any zip code and runs it through a calculation to predict if schools will be shut the next day.Western Connecticut's top linebacker trophy being named in honor of Drury's Bill Bryce.A Triplex Cinema purchase deal breaks down at the 'eleventh hour.' What's next for the Great Barrington movie theater?.At sit-in, Simon's Rock students allege that the early college has a pattern of mishandling or covering up sexual assault complaints.Civil lawsuit filed against Bard College at Simon's Rock by father of student who died by suicide on campus.An ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk is now offering tattoo services in North Adams.At the Central Berkshire Record Show, you'll find them all Hidden tracks, unknown acts and vinyls found in a cabin in the woods.The new owners of The Inn at Stockbridge are juggling renovations, raising a family and welcoming their guests.Pittsfield woman is now facing criminal charges in West Street crash that left a young mother dead.Said Fleishman: "I was told people cheered for me at a Super Bowl party." On Sunday night, with Sukhin's calculator predicting an 89 percent chance of cancellation, Newton's superintendent of schools, David Fleishman, released an automated call alerting families there would be no school Monday. School or other officials do make the ultimate decision. "There's nothing he can do if it's not going to be a snow day," said Jonah Rothman, 11, a sixth-grader at Charles River School. The answer is no, but his people don't hold it against him. Sukhin doesn't have the power to cancel school, but some users consider him omnipotent. Given equal amounts of snow, we're more likely to cancel than are schools in Michigan, upstate New York, and northern New England, but less likely to cancel than those in Washington, D.C., or Texas. During a storm, the calculator typically generates between 1 and 2 million predictions, its creator said, noting that some students - and teachers - return multiple times, hoping for a better outcome (and some parents visit, too, hoping for their own version of a good day).īoston, by the way, ranks somewhere in the middle on the winter-toughness scale. And over the past several years, about 60,000 people have bought one of his 99-cent apps.īusiness is brisk. The online calculator is free to use, but Sukhin sells advertising space and subscriptions - a few dollars buys a winter's worth of text alerts for closings up to three days in advance. "I have a nine-year streak of accuracy at Valley View," he said of the New Jersey school that started it all. Sukhin doesn't know his batting average for accurate predictions, but he says since 2012 - when he started at MIT - he's been wrong about cancellations in Greater Boston only once or twice. ![]() "I always hope the number is going to be really high." "I feel like I'm gambling," said Ben Kremer, 16, a sophomore at Brookline High, of the times he uses the calculator. If "Limited" comes up - reflecting a zero to 55 percent likelihood of a snow day - it means students better be ready for school the next morning.īut a "whoo-hoo!" signals 87 percent to 99 percent odds there will be no school or an early dismissal. The calculator then returns the odds of an impending snow day declaration. Kids input a few pieces of info: ZIP code, the number of snow days to date, and the type of school (urban public, rural public, boarding, etc.). "Hype can swing the (likelihood of a snow day) by 10 to 15 percent," said the young man, who claims to have amassed more snow-related school data than any person living. Sukhin has programmed his algorithm to use the data points you'd expect: National Weather Service predictions about the amount and type of precipitation expected the timing of the storm and historical information about what it usually takes for a district to cancel school.īut he uses squishier measures, too, including a storm's social media and TV buzz. Sukhin is now a senior there, studying computer science and business. That was nine years ago, and, as you'd guess, a middle-schooler who thinks about data and algorithms definitely applies to MIT.
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