Members of CATS gave the following talks at a mini symposium at the Dynamic Days Europe Conference, Exeter. Leonard Smith ‘Pragmatic Bayes: embracing with model inadequacy in nonlinear dynamical systems’ Abstract; and ‘Data assimilation: what is the point?’ Abstract; David Stainforth ‘On quantifying the local climate response in observations and models’ Abstract; Ed Wheatcroft ‘On the chance of rain: probability forecasts in an operational setting’ Abstract; and Hailiang Du ‘Data assimilation for imperfect models’ Abstract.