I am the author of the ITnews article. (Score 3, Insightful)

So yeah. Hi.

I wrote some more detailed commentary on my blog, if you want more details than would fit in a short news article.

http://www.eigenmagic.com/2013/01/24/will-the-warmest-100-prove-a-scorcher/ and http://www.eigenmagic.com/2013/01/26/warmest-100-updates/

It's nearly midnight here, but if I get a chance in the morning, I'll post up some more info including the code I used to replicate the Warmest 100's methods, and some scatterplots showing how the accuracy of the predictions got better the closer things got to number one, similar to the tableau link from diodegod.

Statistics is the new black. :)