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0 pointsbena3y ago0 comments

Yeah, Silver simply tells us the odds. Someone did the analysis on it at one point and 538 was "right" at about the rate of their percentages.

i.e. For all the times they called an event 65%, it happened about 65% of the time.

So they weren't "wrong" the other 35% of the time, it's just those are the times the 35% chance bore out.

People have a habit of assuming "is likely" is the same as "guaranteed". Or that that's what the caller believe will happen. And then using the event once passed to discredit the initial analysis.

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mabbo3y ago

This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!"

But he gave Trump a higher probability of winning than just about anyone, other than Trump himself. One of Silver's detractors, Sam Wang, even said it was so impossible Trump would win that he'd eat a bug if he got more than 240 electoral votes. (he chose a gourmet cricket https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/sam-wang-poll-expert-...)

greesil3y ago

Nate and team do modeling well. Fat tails, correlated populations, and they deal with the crap datasets they get from pollsters. I always tune into his podcast when an election rolls around.

yamtaddle3y ago

> This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!"

What was funny about that one was he also got a bunch of "LOL no way you lunatic, he can't possibly have that large a chance and no-one else is saying so, so you're dumb, or maybe you're secretly a pro-Trump shill".

Caught it going both ways.

oneoff7863y ago

That “someone” includes 538 themselves. They’re very transparent about their track record and methodology.

refurb3y ago

That logic means you can never prove them wrong (or judge accuracy) unless they give a 100% probability to an outcome which they never would.

Sounds kinda useless?

I mean, if they said the probabilities were 99 to 1 or 1 to 99, regardless the outcome they can say “well, we never said it couldnt happen”

green_on_black3y ago

No, we know how to deal with statistics. Sounds like you need a course in it.

refurb3y ago

Who is "we"?

In that case, please "educate" me on how to understand the quality of a prediction (was it accurate or not), of a binary event (say a Presidential candidate winning election), when both outcomes are both "probable" to a non-zero degree.

I'm eagerly looking forward to my "education".

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0 pointsbena3y ago0 comments

Yeah, Silver simply tells us the odds. Someone did the analysis on it at one point and 538 was "right" at about the rate of their percentages.

i.e. For all the times they called an event 65%, it happened about 65% of the time.

So they weren't "wrong" the other 35% of the time, it's just those are the times the 35% chance bore out.

People have a habit of assuming "is likely" is the same as "guaranteed". Or that that's what the caller believe will happen. And then using the event once passed to discredit the initial analysis.

0 comments

mabbo3y ago

This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!"

greesil3y ago

Nate and team do modeling well. Fat tails, correlated populations, and they deal with the crap datasets they get from pollsters. I always tune into his podcast when an election rolls around.

yamtaddle3y ago

> This is exactly why the 2016 election was interesting. Silver called it about 33% chance Trump would win. And then he did, and people said "AHA! You were WRONG!"

Caught it going both ways.

oneoff7863y ago

That “someone” includes 538 themselves. They’re very transparent about their track record and methodology.

refurb3y ago

That logic means you can never prove them wrong (or judge accuracy) unless they give a 100% probability to an outcome which they never would.

Sounds kinda useless?

I mean, if they said the probabilities were 99 to 1 or 1 to 99, regardless the outcome they can say “well, we never said it couldnt happen”

green_on_black3y ago

No, we know how to deal with statistics. Sounds like you need a course in it.

refurb3y ago

Who is "we"?

I'm eagerly looking forward to my "education".

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