New Study shows American public's thoughts on mainstream news after the election. - Polidicks

The Russians have done well.

I'm pretty much exclusive to Reuters, personally. Whether or not they have a bias (I never sensed one myself), they at least make an effort to maintain neutrality on the linguistic level.

[QUOTE=danielmm8888;51640011]Somebody should put an end to x-leaning "news" sites such as Salon, Mother Jones, Breitbart and InfoWars (yes, I lumped both far right and far left leaning sites in). Or at the very least globally discredit them as a news organization.[/QUOTE] It's impossible to be completely unbiased

Just use Facepunch instead for news. Most articles are held to a higher standard here, and any bullshit stories are ripped apart in the comments section. CNN gets what it deserves on this list, most news agencies aren't called out for making blatantly fake news stories like being in a scud missile attack during the gulf war.

[QUOTE=AlbertWesker;51640699]Just use Facepunch instead for news. Most articles are held to a higher standard here, and any bullshit stories are ripped apart in the comments section. CNN gets what it deserves on this list, most news agencies aren't called out for making blatantly fake news stories like being in a scud missile attack during the gulf war.[/QUOTE] No. This isn't a good place at all to get an unbiased sense of goings on in the world, pretty much no forum will be. SH is like, maybe a step above r/news and /pol/ as far as quality goes. Not much higher than that.

Depends on what the news is talking about. For general "happenings," most are fine. But when it comes to actually forming opinions you'll want to dive deeper because the news, even if it biases you in the right direction, will leave your thoughts pretty hollow. By diving deeper I mean primary sources, studies, reading non-fiction, etc.. At least that's how I see it.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51637889]Why? Trump won, they didn't say "Trump can't win". They gave him a low shot. Because, he had a low shot. Just because a long shot became a reality doesn't mean anyone was wrong on the math.[/QUOTE] People don't know what statistics are, ergo they will receive less attention.

[QUOTE=Radical_ed;51640927]People don't know what statistics are, ergo they will receive less attention.[/QUOTE] Yeah sure I made that exact post weeks ago but Tudd seems to have a beef with how 538 works from a mechanical standpoint.

You guys could hear even worse dissent about 538 than me just saying they will have less people who rely on them next time and that Nate Silver fell for the Blue Wall despite knowing a year ago it wasn't that real. Like the good ole Huffington Post. [quote]While I never had Nate in one of the statistics classes I taught or TAd at the University of Chicago, here is what I would have said to him: Quite simply, his modeling approach is overly complicated and baroque. It has so many moving parts that it is like an animal with no bones. That is why it then has so many places where he has to impose his (hopefully unbiased) views. The problem with this is that he could push the results around quite a bit if he wanted to. That doesn’t mean he is purposely rigging the model; and, I don’t suspect he is. However it does mean that he isn’t letting the data do the talking and he is, instead, imposing his views. (Perhaps we could say he is mansplaining the implications to the data?) Where do these views come from? Maybe past data or his “gut feeling” or unconscious bias. In the end, we don’t know and so we are left with a heap of uncertainty and an opaque series of assumptions. Ryan Grim has said that this amounts to, effectively, punditry. I’m not sure I would go that far, but it isn’t a win for reproducible research or defensible and unbiased analysis.[/quote] [url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/im-a-stats-prof-heres-why-nate-silvers-model-was-all-over-the-place_us_582238dce4b0d9ce6fbf69b6[/url]

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641368]You guys could hear even worse dissent about 538 than me just saying they will have less people who rely on them next time and that Nate Silver fell for the Blue Wall despite knowing a year ago it wasn't that real. [/QUOTE] Did you just totally ignore my post. It wouldn't be the first time I guess.

[QUOTE=Raidyr;51640065]538 aggregates polls based on demographics and pollster ratings. All he did was analyze other peoples polls and came up with the odds. It's just a fact that nearly every poll conducted in all three states gave Clinton some sort of margin. It doesn't have anything to do with his blue wall post and in fact vindicates it as the takeaway from the article is that the concept of "electoral walls" is practically non-existent. I don't understand how this makes him retarded. [/quote] He should as a pollster that blogs introspectively maybe consider his earlier points about the Blue wall instead of just actually using those margins. That blue wall post was from Nov 2015, but makes a appearance as his number 1 reason why his prediction was off on election day. Not at one point in this election from that article in November 2015 did he reconsider that this could be the factor that decides the election. [quote] How do you analyze the silent majority from an objective standpoint? [/quote] Get individual state polls for those states and analyze historical precedents of times when two time voters switched parties still in a third election. [quote] And that's not at all what people mean when they use the XCOM metaphor.[/QUOTE] The XCOM metaphor was so crap it should be bannable like my Dota 2 EC analogy. [editline]8th January 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Raidyr;51641411]Did you just totally ignore my post. It wouldn't be the first time I guess.[/QUOTE] I typically just ignore the crap where I feel you gone less objective and more subjective. But here is my reply to your post.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641442]He should as a pollster that blogs introspectively maybe consider his earlier points about the Blue wall instead of just actually using those margins. That blue wall post was from Nov 2015, but makes a appearance as his number 1 reason why his prediction was off on election day. Not at one point in this election from that article in November 2015 did he reconsider that this could be the factor that decides the election.[/quote] What polls should he have used? Should he have just thrown out polls that showed Clinton ahead? I feel like you are fundamentally misunderstanding what the Blue Wall means or how 538 reaches the conclusions it does. Can you link the post where he said it was the number one reason his prediction was off? [QUOTE=Tudd;51641442]Get individual state polls for those states and analyze historical precedents of times when two time voters switched parties still in a third election.[/quote] Is there a precedent for this? Does any pollster currently do this? I know many polls ask who they voted for in the past election but that method has it's problems as well. [QUOTE=Tudd;51641442]I typically just ignore the crap where I feel you gone less objective and more subjective. But here is my reply to your post.[/quote] I just don't understand why you have such a hateboner for the person who gave the most accurate results out of any other aggregate. Do you hate Nate Silver personally because Trump does?

[QUOTE=Tudd;51637989]It really hasn't changed my statements honestly.[/QUOTE] I'm amazed you think the only major pollster that gave Trump any chance to win, to the point they were attacked for it, won't be "relevant" after this election despite being the only people to get the electoral split right. Tudd, when you post conservative media you say you're doing it to challenge people's opinions. Right now people are challenging yours with scores of evidence and all you're doing is retreating into a rhetorical hole. If this is something you feel strongly about, learn what you can. I don't know much about polling either. But post after post of non-arguments just wastes everyone's time.

[QUOTE=Super Muffin;51641666]I'm amazed you think the only major pollster that gave Trump any chance to win, to the point they were attacked for it, won't be "relevant" after this election despite being the only people to get the electoral split right. Tudd, when you post conservative media you say you're doing it to challenge people's opinions. Right now people are challenging yours with scores of evidence and all you're doing is retreating into a very misinformed and factually wrong rhetorical hole. If this is something you feel strongly about, learn what you can. I don't know much about polling either. But post after post of non-arguments just wastes everyone's time.[/QUOTE] It's not that people are challenging my points really. They just don't like how harsh my tone is on 538. And yes, I will keep saying this because it is very true. When a polling entity like 538 fails to predict accurately the outcome, despite having better predictions than something like huffington post, people will pay less attention to them next time. Argue up and down me all you want, but polls get more popular based on track record or atleast identifying the possible reasons why their data could be proven wrong beforehand. As I have shown here before (and this will answer a point Raidyr brought up) Nate Silver criticizes the Blue wall in a post dating November 2015, but then his day after post of the election results states, "The Democrats’ supposed “blue wall” — always a dubious proposition — has crumbled." as his first point to explain the results. [url]http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/[/url] So is it wrong for me to say that Nate Silver was wildly wrong on states like PA, Michigan, and Wisconsin? Especially when he said himself that the idea of a blue wall holding strong was dubious, but [b]still[/b] gave the margins as if it existed, going against his own advice.

He gave him those margins because that's what the polls said. If you have a problem with polling that's one thing, but you are making it seem like he should have just ignored polls entirely and gone with his gut. I'm just so confused. He tells us in 2015 that the Blue Wall doesn't exist. Then in 2016 he says it still doesn't exist. Everyone else sees it as a good prediction and a vindication for Silver. I can't possibly see why you are trying to spin this out like it's a weakness. [editline]8th January 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Tudd;51641717] Argue up and down me all you want, but polls get more popular based on track record or atleast identifying the possible reasons why their data could be proven wrong beforehand. [/QUOTE] 538 doesn't do polling. They aggregate polls and use a method that proved far more accurate than anyone else to arrive at predictions. Nate Silver has actually talked about the weakness of polls during 2016 on more than one occasion. I seriously get the impression that you either don't understand what 538/Nate Silver does or that you just hate him because of Trump's beef.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641717][B]When a polling entity like 538 fails to predict accurately the outcome,[/B] [/QUOTE] You can repeat this til you're blue in the face, however it doesn't affect the reality of the situation.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51641751]You can repeat this til you're blue in the face, however it doesn't affect the reality of the situation.[/QUOTE] Well they didn't, despite being one of the more generous ones, at the end of the day it was wrong on the overall outcome and quite a few states individually.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641769]Well they didn't, despite being one of the more generous ones, at the end of the day it was wrong on the overall outcome and quite a few states individually.[/QUOTE] Okay can you explain to me how they were "Wrong"? If I predicted that there'd be an 80% chance of a win in Alaska for Clinton, and it went Trump, was I wrong? Or did the probabilities just not favour the more likely chance? Do you understand that a high probability for something to happen, or not to happen isn't an exclusion of that thing happening or not happening?

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641769]Well they didn't, despite being one of the more generous ones, at the end of the day it was wrong on the overall outcome and quite a few states individually.[/QUOTE] The polls were wrong. 538 reports polls. He even weighted them towards Trump more than anyone else.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641769]Well they didn't, despite being one of the more generous ones, at the end of the day it was wrong on the overall outcome and quite a few states individually.[/QUOTE] Your point: 538 was wrong so they won't be as relevant Multiple poster's counter-point: This will only make them more relevant. Also, having a percentage chance to win is not a definite "so and so will win". So, again, they weren't "wrong".

[QUOTE=Raidyr;51641739]He gave him those margins because that's what the polls said. If you have a problem with polling that's one thing, but you are making it seem like he should have just ignored polls entirely and gone with his gut. I'm just so confused. He tells us in 2015 that the Blue Wall doesn't exist. Then in 2016 he says it still doesn't exist. Everyone else sees it as a good prediction and a vindication for Silver. I can't possibly see why you are trying to spin this out like it's a weakness.[/quote] Well he has taken liberties before, hence why he makes so many blog posts to explain his methodology. But my point being is that he admitted that the blue wall he was against existing, did actually fail. So why was it in a whole year of doing 538 since the original post in November 2015, he never re-explored this contingency, even though he actually gave the margins to those blue wall states as if they had the blue wall factor behind them? [quote] 538 doesn't do polling. They aggregate polls and use a method that proved far more accurate than anyone else to arrive at predictions. Nate Silver has actually talked about the weakness of polls during 2016 on more than one occasion. I seriously get the impression that you either don't understand what 538/Nate Silver does or that you just hate him because of Trump's beef.[/QUOTE] I understand how 538 works and still think what they are doing is admirable, but I don't mind calling them out for being wrong in key areas. Where my "hate" comes from is how idiotic some people sound trying to act like his system is not infallible when it clearly was. [editline]8th January 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Super Muffin;51641790]Your point: 538 was wrong so they won't be as relevant[/quote] Yep [quote] Multiple poster's counter-point: Everyone was wrong but 538 [B]were the only ones to get the electoral split right[/B]. This will only make them more relevant."[/QUOTE] Well I can tell you that the people on the Trump side that did respect the 538 model don't give a shit for right now and don't see the nuance you are describing. And I can tell you that most people don't see it from that nuance in general. The average person looks at a poll, if it's wrong on the outcome, it's wrong, and will just not pay attention to it as much next time.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641791]Well he has taken liberties before, hence why he makes so many blog posts to explain his methodology. But my point being is that he admitted that the blue wall he was against existing, did actually fail. So why was it in a whole year of doing 538 since the original post in November 2015, he never re-explored this contingency, even though he actually gave the margins to those blue wall states as if they had the blue wall factor behind them? I understand how 538 works and still think what they are doing is admirable, but I don't mind calling them out for being wrong in key areas. Where my "hate" comes from is how idiotic some people sound trying to act like his system is not infallible when it clearly was.[/QUOTE] because he isn't a pollster and if the pollsters he relies on aren't doing polls in those areas he can't very well say "HEY I AM NATE SILVER AND I DEMAND THIS OF YOU". They do what they do, and 538 just aggregates it. His system is not infallible. [B]I am not saying that[/B]. What I am saying is that your complaint that he was "Wrong" is based on a serious, and fundamental misunderstanding of how the polling vs aggregation system actually works. [editline]8th January 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Tudd;51641791] And I can tell you that most people don't see it from that nuance in general. The average person looks at a poll, if it's wrong on the outcome, it's wrong, and will just not pay attention to it as much next time.[/QUOTE] Can you at least stick to one point and stop shifting all over the place as to why you think they suck? First you run with something about polls. Then you run with something about his methods. Then you run with bias. Then back to polls. Now it's public perception of polls. Which is it? We've already established that the average person isn't what we're talking about here, because we weren't initially talking about perception, but efficacy, and the fact is he was effective. You've argued he wasn't, and now you're arguing he isn't going to be perceived well either.

[QUOTE=El Periodista;51637500]I'm more of an NPR guy, myself. They're biased, sure, but they've got a commitment to the job that I respect.[/QUOTE] I love NPR. They've got a lot of interesting stories on all kinds of topics but you can tell that they really try to reduce bias as much as they can for a news organization. Before I started listening to them I thought they just leaned far left based on what people were saying but I've pretty much heard both sides equally represented.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641791]Well he has taken liberties before, hence why he makes so many blog posts to explain his methodology. But my point being is that he admitted that the blue wall he was against existing, did actually fail. So why was it in a whole year of doing 538 since the original post in November 2015, he never re-explored this contingency, even though he actually gave the margins to those blue wall states as if they had the blue wall factor behind them?[/QUOTE] You are just repeating the same lines over and over without every responding to what I'm saying and you aren't even bothering to answer my question. What should he have done, given the fact that every poll gave those states to Clinton? [QUOTE=Tudd;51641791]I understand how 538 works and still think what they are doing is admirable, but I don't mind calling them out for being wrong in key areas. Where my "hate" comes from is how idiotic some people sound trying to act likehis system is not infallible when it clearly was.[/QUOTE] I don't know about infallible but I think his system is pretty good. It bears repeating but it arrived at the most accurate conclusion of any other aggregate, even if it was "wrong". I think polls are plenty fallible though, and he has said as much, but the nature of polling is that you have to work with what you have. For someone who understands their work and finds it admirable, you seem to think you can do it better but don't want to share your idea with the rest of the class, preferring to call us idiots. [QUOTE=Tudd;51641791]Well I can tell you that the people on the Trump side that did respect the 538 model don't give a shit for right now and don't see the nuance you are describing. And I can tell you that most people don't see it from that nuance in general. The average person looks at a poll, if it's wrong on the outcome, it's wrong, and will just not pay attention to it as much next time.[/QUOTE] Well I'd imagine the niche of people on the Trump side who trusted 538's methodology up until November 9th and who now rebuke it is extraordinarily small. Yes, again, people who don't understand what 538 does or statistics in general might not pay attention next time but those people are ultimately meaningless.

That XCOM thing isn't even a metaphor, it's just an a very clear example of how probability works.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641717]It's not that people are challenging my points really. They just don't like how harsh my tone is on 538. And yes, I will keep saying this because it is very true. When a polling entity like 538 fails to predict accurately the outcome, despite having better predictions than something like huffington post, people will pay less attention to them next time. Argue up and down me all you want, but polls get more popular based on track record or atleast identifying the possible reasons why their data could be proven wrong beforehand. As I have shown here before (and this will answer a point Raidyr brought up) Nate Silver criticizes the Blue wall in a post dating November 2015, but then his day after post of the election results states, "The Democrats’ supposed “blue wall” — always a dubious proposition — has crumbled." as his first point to explain the results. [url]http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-a-difference-2-percentage-points-makes/[/url] So is it wrong for me to say that Nate Silver was wildly wrong on states like PA, Michigan, and Wisconsin? Especially when he said himself that the idea of a blue wall holding strong was dubious, but [b]still[/b] gave the margins as if it existed, going against his own advice.[/QUOTE] [URL="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-i-acted-like-a-pundit-and-screwed-up-on-donald-trump/"]Nate Silver took his own advice in the Republican primaries and he was completely wrong.[/URL] that's the whole friggin reason why you have an algorithm instead of just a guy smelling his own farts and putting it up on the internet. if that's what you want then just read blogs

[QUOTE=Tudd;51641769]Well they didn't, despite being one of the more generous ones, at the end of the day it was wrong on the overall outcome and quite a few states individually.[/QUOTE] Earlier in the thread you claimed to understand statistics. Now you've conclusively proved that you don't. Imagine a hundred sided dice, with 20 faces having Trump's face and the popular vote, 10 having Trump's face without the popular vote, and 70 faces with a big ol' Clinton grin. Now I say "It's more like that the dice lands on face with Clinton on it", and then we roll it. It lands on one of the ten. This outcome doesn't necessarily change anything about my prediction - maybe it was more likely that it would land on Clinton, but it just happened to land on Trump. After rolling the die say, a 100 times, we get a distribution that shows that it the dice was actually more likely to land on Trump - [I]now[/I] you can say (with some confidence) that I was wrong in my prediction. Sadly we can't do a rerun of this election, so we can't verify whether 538's model was entirely off, whether Trump always had a 100% chance of winning or whether Huffington post was right in its prediction, but it was simply a 1 in 100 for Trump. We [I]can[/I] however say, that it is [I]unlikely[/I] that Huffington Post's prediction was right, because it would only happen 1 out of a 100 times. 538 gave Trump a 30% risk of winning, though - try flipping a coin twice; if you got heads twice in a row, you were even luckier than Trump in 538's model. Edit: Maybe you're simply arguing this from Average Joe's POV which is very simplistic, but honestly then your point is just kind of stupid. Yeah, Average Joe is a schmuck, who cares. (Most) Average Joe(s) wasn't following 538.

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;51642286]Earlier in the thread you claimed to understand statistics. Now you've conclusively proved that you don't. Imagine a hundred sided dice, with 20 faces having Trump's face and the popular vote, 10 having Trump's face without the popular vote, and 70 faces with a big ol' Clinton grin. Now I say "It's more like that the dice lands on face with Clinton on it", and then we roll it. It lands on one of the ten. This outcome doesn't necessarily change anything about my prediction - maybe it was more likely that it would land on Clinton, but it just happened to land on Trump. After rolling the die say, a 100 times, we get a distribution that shows that it the dice was actually more likely to land on Trump - [I]now[/I] you can say (with some confidence) that I was wrong in my prediction. Sadly we can't do a rerun of this election, so we can't verify whether 538's model was entirely off, whether Trump always had a 100% chance of winning or whether Huffington post was right in its prediction, but it was simply a 1 in 100 for Trump. We [I]can[/I] however say, that it is [I]unlikely[/I] that Huffington Post's prediction was right, because it would only happen 1 out of a 100 times. 538 gave Trump a 30% risk of winning, though - try flipping a coin twice; if you got heads twice in a row, you were even luckier than Trump in 538's model. Edit: Maybe you're simply arguing this from Average Joe's POV which is very simplistic, but honestly then your point is just kind of stupid. Yeah, Average Joe is a schmuck, who cares. (Most) Average Joe(s) wasn't following 538.[/QUOTE] You call me stupid, but you actually think the election was a game of chance. I think you took the XCOM analogy too literally. Talk about not understanding what the statistics in 538 actually means.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51642315]You call me stupid, but you actually think the election was a game of chance. I think you took the XCOM analogy too literally. Talk about not understanding what the statistics in 538 actually means.[/QUOTE] It means they ran iterations on a simulation and then got a distribution of results wherein either Clinton or Trump won in various scenarios. What did the percentage actually mean if not a chance of something occurring? If 538 had given Trump 49% and Clinton 51%, would their model still be wrong? And actually I called your point stupid, but I guess you can pick one yourself.

[QUOTE=Tudd;51642315]You call me stupid, but you actually think the election was a game of chance. I think you took the XCOM analogy too literally. Talk about not understanding what the statistics in 538 actually means.[/QUOTE] You haven't addressed any of my points on this in the last few posts Why is it that they were wrong?