Fuck Zorp You Stathead Turds

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Obama's win expectancy dropped to 72.9% in 24 hours, so we have movement, folks.

Yup... Down from 74.6% on Oct 28.

Which was up from 73.6% on Oct 27.

Which was down from 74.4% on Oct 26.

Which was up from 73.1% on Oct 25.

Which was up from 71.0% on Oct 24.

Which was up form 68.1% on Oct 23.

Which was down from 72.0% on Aug 10.

Which was up from 67.7% on July 13.

Which was up form 63.7% on May 31.

MITTMENTUM!

And now back up again to 77.4%

We have movement.

78.4%

[Slaky]

Obama's win expectancy dropped to 72.9% in 24 hours, so we have movement, folks.

Yup... Down from 74.6% on Oct 28.

Which was up from 73.6% on Oct 27.

Which was down from 74.4% on Oct 26.

Which was up from 73.1% on Oct 25.

Which was up from 71.0% on Oct 24.

Which was up form 68.1% on Oct 23.

Which was down from 72.0% on Aug 10.

Which was up from 67.7% on July 13.

Which was up form 63.7% on May 31.

MITTMENTUM!

And now back up again to 77.4%

We have movement.

78.4%

SURPRISE! Obama created a hurricane and now he's racing to his second term. And Nate Silver was in on it the WHOLE TIME.

CONSPIRACY!!!!!

[J. Walter Weatherman]

79.0%

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/oct-31-obamas-electoral-college-firewall-holding-in-polls/

Mr. Obama is not a sure thing, by any means. It is a close race. His chances of holding onto his Electoral College lead and converting it into another term are equivalent to the chances of an N.F.L. team winning when it leads by a field goal with three minutes left to play in the fourth quarter. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and sometimes they will.

But it turns out that an N.F.L. team that leads by a field goal with three minutes left to go winds up winning the game 79 percent of the time. Those were Mr. Obama's chances in the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of Wednesday: 79 percent.

Not coincidentally, these are also about Mr. Obama's chances of winning Ohio, according to the forecast.

[PenPho]

79.0%

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/oct-31-obamas-electoral-college-firewall-holding-in-polls/

Mr. Obama is not a sure thing, by any means. It is a close race. His chances of holding onto his Electoral College lead and converting it into another term are equivalent to the chances of an N.F.L. team winning when it leads by a field goal with three minutes left to play in the fourth quarter. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and sometimes they will.

But it turns out that an N.F.L. team that leads by a field goal with three minutes left to go winds up winning the game 79 percent of the time. Those were Mr. Obama's chances in the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of Wednesday: 79 percent.

Not coincidentally, these are also about Mr. Obama's chances of winning Ohio, according to the forecast.

Who has the ball in this scenario?

That has no impact, or just overall it's 79% chance of winning? 

[Brownie]

79.0%

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/oct-31-obamas-electoral-college-firewall-holding-in-polls/

Mr. Obama is not a sure thing, by any means. It is a close race. His chances of holding onto his Electoral College lead and converting it into another term are equivalent to the chances of an N.F.L. team winning when it leads by a field goal with three minutes left to play in the fourth quarter. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and sometimes they will.

But it turns out that an N.F.L. team that leads by a field goal with three minutes left to go winds up winning the game 79 percent of the time. Those were Mr. Obama's chances in the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of Wednesday: 79 percent.

Not coincidentally, these are also about Mr. Obama's chances of winning Ohio, according to the forecast.

Who has the ball in this scenario?

That has no impact, or just overall it's 79% chance of winning? 

Ohio State?

Oh shit, they're playing Illinois at home this weekend.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Ohio State?

God dammit, Slate.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

80.9%

http://markcoddington.com/2012/10/31/nate-silver-journalism-politics-knowledge-epistemology/

The more I think about the rift between political journalism and Nate Silver, the more it seems that it's one that's fundamentally an issue of epistemology — how journalists know what they know. Here's why I think that's the case.

When we talk about the epistemology of journalism, it all eventually ties into objectivity. The journalistic norm of objectivity is more than just a careful neutrality or attempt to appear unbiased; for journalists, it's the grounds on which they claim the authority to describe reality to us. And the authority of objectivity is rooted in a particular process.

That process is very roughly this: Journalists get access to privileged information from official sources, then evaluate, filter, and order it through the rather ineffable quality alternatively known as "news judgment," "news sense," or "savvy." This norm of objectivity is how political journalists say to the public (and to themselves), "This is why you can trust what we say we know — because we found it out through this process." (This is far from a new observation – there are decades of sociological research on this.)

Silver's process — his epistemology — is almost exactly the opposite of this:

Where political journalists' information is privileged, his is public, coming from poll results that all the rest of us see, too.

Where political journalists' information is evaluated through a subjective and nebulous professional/cultural sense of judgment, his evaluation is systematic and scientifically based. It involves judgment, too, but because it's based in a scientific process, we can trace how he applied that judgment to reach his conclusions.

Both of those different ways of knowing inevitably result in different types of conclusions. Silver's conclusions are at once much more specific and much less certain than those of the political punditry. The process of journalistic objectivity can't possibly produce that kind of specificity; that's outside of its epistemological capabilities.

...

The other objection political journalists/pundits have to Silver's process is evident here, too. They don't just have a problem with how he knows what he knows, but with how he states it, too. Essentially, they are mistaking specificity for certainty. To them, the specificity of Silver's projections smack of arrogance because, again, their ways of knowing are incapable of producing that kind of specificity. It has to be an overstatement.

In actuality, of course, Silver's specificity isn't arrogance at all — it's the natural product of a scientific, statistical way of producing knowledge. Statistical analyses produce specific numbers by their very nature. That doesn't mean they're certain: In fact, the epistemology has long been far more tentative in reaching conclusions than the epistemology of journalism. As many people have noted over the past few days, a probability is not a prediction. Silver himself has repeatedly called for less certainty in political analysis, not more. But that split between specificity and certainty is a foreign concept to the journalistic epistemology.

...

When journalistic objectivity is confronted with scientific objectivity, its circuits are fried.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

More statfaggotry for you dong-sippers out there (Yeti): http://election.princeton.edu/romentum-rove-1nov2012.php

[morpheus]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

[PenPho]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

He wrote the Black Swan?

Well, I think we should at least listen to what he has to say.

[Eli]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

Lately I've been more interested in the psychology of cognitive dissonance.

[morpheus]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

Lately I've been more interested in the psychology of cognitive dissonance.

I can imagine why.

[Slaky]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

Lately I've been more interested in the psychology of cognitive dissonance.

I can imagine why.

"Silver stormed onto the scene in 2008 when, according to his acolytes..."

Ah yes that's really some genuine language.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

He wrote the Black Swan?

No. He merely name-checked it.

As he notes when he mentioned it, Nassim Taleb wrote "The Black Swan".

[PenPho]

If you're interested in a genuine critique of Nate Silver's model...

He wrote the Black Swan?

No. He merely name-checked it.

As he notes when he mentioned it, Nassim Taleb wrote "The Black Swan".

I'll just assume you missed the .gif.