Fuck Zorp You Stathead Turds

[Bort]

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.

Not enough sodomy for his taste.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

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

This takes us back to Nassim Taleb's key insight: despite our best efforts, we humans are just not that good at predicting the future. The main assumption underlying Nate Silver's Obama bet this year is that the state polls will be correct. Maybe they will be, even though three states were wrong in 2010, two states were wrong in 2008, one state was wrong in 2004 (WI), and a very important state in 2000 was incorrectly called by most pollsters.

Nate Silver's model could very well forecast every state correctly next week, assuming the polls accurately reflect the true voting population. But if they're wrong, it'll be Nate Silver whose value is at risk. If that happens, I have a great title for his next book: "The Snake and the Oil."

That reads like a pretty weak "critique" to me.

Silver has been totally up front about the differences between the national polls and the state polls. Particularly of late, as there has been a rather consistent discrepancy between the two for a while now.

From Wednesday:

But perhaps national polls tell the right story of the race instead — meaning that the state polls systematically overrate Mr. Obama's standing?

It's certainly possible. (It keeps me up late at night.) If the polls in states like Ohio and Wisconsin are wrong, then FiveThirtyEight — and all of our competitors that build projections based on state polls — will not have a happy Nov. 6.

With that said, our decision to cast our lot mostly with the state polls is not arbitrary. In recent years, they've been a slightly more unbiased indicator of how the election will play out.

...

In recent elections — since state polling data became more robust — it's the state polls that have done a bit better. This was especially so in 1996, when national polls implied a double-digit victory for Bill Clinton over Bob Dole (and Ross Perot) but state polls were more in line with the single-digit victory that he actually achieved. In 2000, state polls provided an accurate portrayal of a too-close-to-call race, while national polls missed high on George W. Bush vs. Al Gore.

There have been other years like 1992 in which the national polls did a bit better. But on average since that year, the state polls have had a bias of 1.1 percentage points — half as much as the national polls, which have had a 2.1-point bias instead.

We're approaching the point where Mr. Romney may need the state polls to be systematically biased against him in order to win the Electoral College. And that certainly could turn out to be the case: if Mr. Romney wins the popular vote by more than about two percentage points, for example, he'll be very likely to cobble together a winning electoral map, somehow and some way. (And he'll be a virtual lock if the results are in line with Mr. Romney's best national polls, like the Gallup survey, which put him four or five points ahead.)

But the historical evidence weighs in slightly more heavily on behalf of the state polls, in my view, when they seem to contradict the national ones. If the state polls are right, than Mr. Obama is not just the favorite in the Electoral College but probably also in the popular vote.

Refer also to this Sam Wang post I linked to above and this recent NPR interview with both Silver and Wang.

So, Nate's been up front about his model's dependence on polling (by Tuesday, his fundamentals-based modeling will have been completely phased out of the projection, leaving only polling data behind his projection) and on state polls in particular.

He's shared, often at great length, the statistically-informed reasons behind the choices he's made with his model. And the whole damn thing is (as Davis himself attests), recreateable by others. At least in principle, if not in every single detail.

And this makes him a snake oil salesman?

Is Davis' hand-waving about Nassim Taleb and uncertainty really that much well-informed that Scarborough's "50.1%"?

[Chuck to Chuck]

This is pretty clear cut.  The ones arguing that Nate Silver's methods are wrong are the Jim Hendry's to Nate Silver's Billy Beane.

There is a vested interest in the pundit class to not have it boil down to numbers.  Why pay Dick Morris et al for punditry if they can be replaced for free with an algorithm?

[J. Walter Weatherman]

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nov-1-the-simple-case-for-saying-obama-is-the-favorite/

If you are following some of the same people that I do on Twitter, you may have noticed some pushback about our contention that Barack Obama is a favorite (and certainly not a lock) to be re-elected. I haven't come across too many analyses suggesting that Mitt Romney is the favorite. (There are exceptions.) But there are plenty of people who say that the race is a "tossup."

What I find confounding about this is that the argument we're making is exceedingly simple. Here it is:

Obama's ahead in Ohio.

A somewhat-more-complicated version:

Mr. Obama is leading in the polls of Ohio and other states that would suffice for him to win 270 electoral votes, and by a margin that has historically translated into victory a fairly high percentage of the time.

http://election.princeton.edu/believe-national-or-state-polls-2nov2012.php

Imagine for a moment that national and state polls use exactly the same methods (not exactly true, but close enough). Historically, pollsters as a group do well. But they aren't perfect. In 2000-2008, national-poll medians missed the final outcome by 0.3%, 1.4%, and 2.5%, despite the fact that perfect methods would have missed by 0.6% on average. So there's a large systematic error. How would this affect one's snapshot view of the national and state race?

This year, the national race is close. A systematic error of 1-2% would make it hard to accurately determine who was in the lead nationally. But state races are usually less close. Even Ohio, a critical swing state, has a median of Obama +3.0 +/- 0.5%, a lead that would not be altered by that systematic error. Indeed, at the moment only two states are within range of flipping in such a way: Virginia and Florida. The likely outcome of the other 49 races would still be determined correctly. The Presidency is decided by winner-take-all elections in each state. Therefore our Meta-Analysis of State Polls is likely to come closer tothe correct result than national polls. In coming days I'll combine the two to come up with a final prediction of the popular vote margin.

I should say that for similar reasons, the U.S. system of electing a President is more fraud-proof than a simple popular vote. Even if there were voting error in one state, the effects would be contained there, like flooding on a compartmented ship. Without the Electoral College, every time there was a close national race we'd have the Florida 2000 dispute (Bush v. Gore) in every precinct in the country. Blech.

[Yeti]

This is a SPORTZ thread, people!

[Bort]

This is a SPORTZ thread, people!

IT'S A STATZ THREAD, SHERSON.

[Gilgamesh]

This is a SPORTZ thread, people!

IT'S A STATZ THREAD, SHERSON.

Goatson?

[Bort]

This is a SPORTZ thread, people!

IT'S A STATZ THREAD, SHERSON.

Goatson?

+1

[J. Walter Weatherman]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-york-times-bully-knocks-stack-of-polls-from-na,30218/

"Hey, Silverdork, I got a poll for you. It says there's a 90 percent chance that I'm going to beat the shit out of you, what do you think of that?"

[Quality Start Machine]

Has Nate Silver run the odds on somebody completely losing their shit in either a shopping mall or Government building Wednesday morning?

[World's #1 Astros Fan]

Has Nate Silver run the odds on somebody completely losing their shit in either a shopping mall or Government building Wednesday morning?

I'm anticipating staying off Facebook on Wednesday in the event that Obama wins re-election for fear that the aggregate asshurt might 'splode my computer.

[Slaky]

Has Nate Silver run the odds on somebody completely losing their shit in either a shopping mall or Government building Wednesday morning?

I'm anticipating staying off Facebook on Wednesday in the event that Obama wins re-election for fear that the aggregate asshurt might 'splode my computer.

I think I plan to enjoy the hell out of it either way.

If Obama wins the racism that the Internet brings us will be amazing. That and the cries of a rigged election, conspiracy theories and everything else.

If Romney wins you get the same conspiracy/rigged talk and also typical liberal whining PLUS at least 4 years of amazing jokes.

It's gonna be good.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

PLUS at least 4 years of amazing jokes.

Let's not get too carried away now.

I can't wait for this next election. It's going to be so incredibly awesome.

[Slaky]

PLUS at least 4 years of amazing jokes.

Let's not get too carried away now.

I can't wait for this next election. It's going to be so incredibly awesome.

It has been pretty hilariously awesome. Don't you think?

[Internet Apex]

PLUS at least 4 years of amazing jokes.

Let's not get too carried away now.

I can't wait for this next election. It's going to be so incredibly awesome.

It has been pretty hilariously awesome. Don't you think?

In a very depressing, we're all fucked through the floor kind of way.