• Nate Silver rages at 'fucking idiotic' Huffington Post editor
    48 replies, posted
[t]http://i.imgur.com/dNLvEPk.jpg[/t] [url]http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/nate-silver-huffington-post-polls-twitter-230815[/url] [quote]It began with “This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible,” and got only somewhat more polite from there. Nate Silver unloaded Saturday on the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim, who accused the polling guru and founder of the prediction website fivethirtyeight.com of “changing the results of polls to fit where he thinks the polls truly are, rather than simply entering the poll numbers into his model and crunching them.” Rather than taking a simple average -- like RealClearPolitics does -- Silver’s model weights polls by his team’s assessment of their quality, and also performs several “adjustments” to account for things like the partisan “lean” of a pollster or the trend lines across different polls.[/quote] 538 is increasingly being hit from the left for rating Trump higher than some other forecasts, which still have Clinton at >80%. In a few days we'll know who fucked up
hes right huffpost is convinced trump has a 1% chance to win, that's absurd, and they believe they have the right to call him out? you can't just use poll numbers, there's obvious biases, the numbers would be totally unreliable if that was the case
538 got the last two elections right so right now I trust them a lot more than Dodgy Dave's Backalley Election Forecast.com
trump has a very real chance of winning and ignoring that is both dishonest and potentially dangerous and misleading
Not sure if people notice this, but Nate Silver keep reducing Hillary percentage every time there is a new poll in red solid states like Mississippi, Alabama or Missouri when she obviously have 0 chance of winning those states. His model sometimes does make no sense.
Also for the record, I don't really agree too much with 538 because the data used is too old, it has florida data from 2 weeks ago up, when trump was ahead according to RCP. I like [url]https://electionbettingodds.com[/url] better, even though it focuses more on opinion as it's tied to betting where there's a much larger risk if the site is wrong
only carl diggler has what it takes to face nate silver in an epic forecasting showdown [url]http://www.sixthirtyeight.com[/url]
Nate Silver has every right to rage, considering everyone seems to be doubting him depending on their political biases.
They all ought to put their egos aside and stay professional. Seriously, if you have issues with someone in the same field as you, keep it to yourself or if necessary, shit on them in private. Don't have public drama fests. And don't take attacks against your product to be synonymous with attacks against you. Even if 538's model has some issues, those should be tweaked post-mortem, not a couple of days before election day.
[QUOTE=phaedon;51316021]They all ought to put their egos aside and stay professional. Seriously, if you have issues with someone in the same field as you, keep it to yourself or if necessary, shit on them in private. Don't have public drama fests. And don't take attacks on your product to be synonymous with attacks to you. Even if 538's model has some issues, those should be tweaked post-mortem, not a couple of days before election day.[/QUOTE] I'd say Nate's under a lot of stress considering how the election is going and how schizophrenic the polls have been. Getting called out by Huffington Post of all places might have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
[QUOTE=BlackMageMari;51316029]I'd say Nate's under a lot of stress considering how the election is going and how schizophrenic the polls have been. Getting called out by Huffington Post of all places might have been the straw that broke the camel's back.[/QUOTE] Stress I can understand, but he has been a public figure for long enough to know better than to name-call on Twitter.
[QUOTE=phaedon;51316060]Stress I can understand, but he has been a public figure for long enough to know better than to name-call on Twitter.[/QUOTE] well considering a presidential nominee spends most of his time name-calling on twitter, it doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent
He's just being really cautious considering he wasn't even expecting trump to become the nominee based on his polls.
Also, this is a bit unfair: [quote]“We’ll have to wait and see what happens,” he wrote. “Maybe Silver will be right come Election Day ― Trump will win Florida, and we’ll all be in for a very long night. Or our forecast will be right, she’ll win the state by 5 or 6, and we can all turn in early. “If he’s right, though, it was just a good guess ― a fortunate ‘trend line adjustment’ ― not a mathematical forecast. If you want to put your faith in the numbers, you can relax. She’s got this.”[/quote] There's a possibility that Clinton will win Florida because of polls inadvertently underrepresenting Hispanics or because of superior GOTV infrastructure. These are not modelling flaws.
Nate has actually said multiple times that he is not in to to "predict" the outcome. He wants to model the chances of winning.
[QUOTE=phaedon;51316091]Also, this is a bit unfair: There's a possibility that Clinton will win Florida because of polls inadvertently underrepresenting Hispanics or because of superior GOTV infrastructure. These are not modelling flaws.[/QUOTE] Do these news outlets understand what they're doing when they say things like: [QUOTE]If you want to put your faith in the numbers, you can relax. She’s got this.[/QUOTE] You're actually making it easier for Trump to pull the upset in swing states because people read this and say: "well fuck it, I don't need to go out and vote because she's going to win our state regardless." Most recent example: Brexit. "There's no fucking way enough people are stupid enough to vote leave. I'm not going to waste my time voting."
I wanna mention that the New York Times [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html"]Upshot is pretty great[/URL] Admire how Clinton is projected to win 268 electoral votes based on their state by state breakdown. That's two shy of what's required to win!
[QUOTE=Lambeth;51316131]I wanna mention that New York Time's [url=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html]Upshot is pretty great[/url][/QUOTE] Upshot is the only other forecast I seriously look at, though I might not if they didn't have such great visualisations
If there's one lesson I learnt doing mathematics -- sometimes the numbers don't lie.
[QUOTE=Chaitin;51315932]Not sure if people notice this, but Nate Silver keep reducing Hillary percentage every time there is a new poll in red solid states like Mississippi, Alabama or Missouri when she obviously have 0 chance of winning those states. His model sometimes does make no sense.[/QUOTE] I follow the 538 podcast and listen to them talk about their model a lot so it makes sense. Essentially, a poll in a state tends to affect the states around it in the model. Not to mention that from what they've said, the average of all state polls has traditionally been more accurate than straight national polls. They've looked at literal decades of historical data and I highly doubt they have such an accurate forecasting model if counting those polls actually skewed the results.
[QUOTE=BlackMageMari;51316029]I'd say Nate's under a lot of stress considering how the election is going and how schizophrenic the polls have been. Getting called out by Huffington Post of all places might have been the straw that broke the camel's back.[/QUOTE] I was under the impression that everyone thinks Huffington Post is shit, maybe I was wrong.
[QUOTE=Kristviljan;51316799]I was under the impression that everyone thinks Huffington Post is shit, maybe I was wrong.[/QUOTE] No, Blackmagemari is the only person I know who doesn't realize Huff post is 80% blog posts.
[QUOTE=Kristviljan;51316799]I was under the impression that everyone thinks Huffington Post is shit, maybe I was wrong.[/QUOTE] Huffington post is probably the most prominent nontraditional left wing news source out there.
Is it just me or are people fundamentally ignorant of chance? The average person seems to, if not think, certainly treat something that has a low % of happening as something that [B]won't[/B] happen, and vice versa, something that has a high % as something that will definitely happen. This seems to be the source of a lot of either the schadenfreude or the misplaced anger at Silver's models.
[QUOTE=Tudd;51316802]No, Blackmagemari is the only person I know who doesn't realize Huff post is 80% blog posts.[/QUOTE] I don't know what you mean? I think they're as crap as something like Breitbart. Perhaps not as malicious, but still crap. News is fucked up in the States.
Nate's probably the most non bias person ive seen this whole election, HuffPost really needs to get their head out their arse and come to terms with the fact that Trump being elected is a thing that could happen and the whole world is not a left leaning paradise as they think it is Seems like they're all drinking the Clinton Kool-Aid
there is a little criticism, academic wise to how 538 heavily weighs new polls which cause little shifts to create big jumps which i think is the case right now but otherwise his entire site is based on the rule of statistics and modeling
I don't get it, it's not like 538's model is more optimistic, they're stating pretty clearly that Trump needs to win Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire and North Carolina to win the election, which is within the realm of possibility, it's just a long shot that he wins all four, while Clinton only needs to secure one of those to win.
[QUOTE=Sableye;51317313]there is a little criticism, academic wise to how 538 heavily weighs new polls which cause little shifts to create big jumps which i think is the case right now but otherwise his entire site is based on the rule of statistics and modeling[/QUOTE] Any statistician will tell you that new polls are much more relevant than old polls in terms of accuracy.
lol you guys are way too into these statistics and polls. Honestly, just go vote on Tuesday and whoever wins, wins. Obviously alot of you are solid on who you want to vote for, so reading all this crap is just going to stress you the fuck out.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.