Congrats to Nate, but I wonder why this was necessary. How could this possibly lead to better quality posts?
He also gets access to their data sources
FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
21–30 of 42 posts
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
The poster was clearly congratulating Nate, and then pointing out something specifically that Nate had done well. It's like if you're congratulating Steve Jobs on a successful iPad launch. You aren't obligated to also mention all of the products he has worked on that haven't done so well. And I hardly doubt anyone was trying to convince you, or any other reader on HN, that Nate may have mispredicted something. In fac…
No, that poster was claiming that his coverage was "well-deserved" and I disagreed. He was not obligated to mention his failures, but I did, and that apparently troubles you greatly for some reason. Silver's whole reputation is based on his assumed accuracy and that's why it is important to provide a more complete record of his predictions (not that my post claims to do that or that I would care enough to do that; si…
Eerie success is impressive. Routine failure is not anti-impressive.
People treat Google the same way every time some Labs experiment like Wave fails. They think it means Google's lost their Edge and spinning their wheels. It's equal-and-opposite pessimism to go with the optimism.
This is why I do not treat your counterexamples to Silver's accuracy as a convincing slate of proofs. I don't have enough context to judge those failures against the background of his success or vice versa.
I do find Nate Silver interesting not just for his psychic abilities. He also brings a certain love of statistics and visualization that deserves the level of coverage he gets. Is he doing any better predicting than some quant or world-class stat guy? No, and you can probably find someone who has a better combination of predictions and historical accidents. But he's also bringing the science to the populace, and that is worth praising and talking about.
I do find this 2005 (!) opinion piece by Krugman calling the housing bubble to be an interesting datapoint.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html
But between the Silver stuff and the Krugman stuff I do feel like I have enough context to judge that you have your own axe to grind.
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point was that selectively praising someone's accurate predictions without mentioning his failures is wrong. Krugman is a partisan hack that has a Nobel Prize is one very specific area of economics. It does not qualify him to opine on all other areas.
> Krugman is a partisan hack that has a Nobel Prize is one very specific area of economics. It does not qualify him to opine on all other areas. That seems to be a general feature of politically-engaged economists on both the left and right. I see Krugman as basically a mirror version of Milton Friedman: a blowhard whose statements on politics and policy preferences are usually wildly unsupported by empirical evidenc…
I read a piece on Krugman that was really interesting. For one, it challenged the exact perception that you're advocating: that Krugman takes strong stances on policy matters and uses strong language to defend them, to the detriment of the economics behind them. Interestingly, the piece pointed out that Krugman is usually the stereotypical economist -- quick to qualify and slow to make a strong policy statement without mountains of evidence. The writing style of Paul Krugman may be more the writing style of his wife, who encouraged him to advocate for more policy change. The article definitely painted Krugman's column as more of a cooperation between him and his wife than a straightforward economics work.
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right - it appears that he updated his model right before the elections and I only saw his earlier posts. However, he had a post in 2009 entitled "Could a Republican Win Ted Kennedy's Senate Seat?" with his answer being "Very probably not."
His modus operandi is to build a model and feed it data as it becomes available. So when polling of a race is inconsistent and infrequent until right before the election, you shouldn't imply that it is at all improper behavior or Nate Silver's fault if his model and thus his prediction change drastically right before an election. As for the early, subjective post about the odds, that was posted on 27 August 2009, jus…
Based on your post, it appears that you don't understand how things like statistical significance work. If there is not enough data to make a prediction, you simply should not make a prediction and wait. If you ignore this and your whole business is based on the accuracy of your predictions, expect to be held accountable.
You also apparently didn't read his post I mentioned. It does not talk about just Romney. Here is the direct quote: "As for other Republicans in Massachusetts, their prospects don't figure to be much better."
Silver's whole failed business was based on what Taleb called the "Ludic fallacy" in The Black Swan.
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#25Congrats to Nate, but I wonder why this was necessary. How could this possibly lead to better quality posts?
Much faster page loads. YMMV
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Krugman is a partisan hack that has a Nobel Prize is one very specific area of economics. It does not qualify him to opine on all other areas. That seems to be a general feature of politically-engaged economists on both the left and right. I see Krugman as basically a mirror version of Milton Friedman: a blowhard whose statements on politics and policy preferences are usually wildly unsupported by empirical evidenc…
I read a piece on Krugman that was really interesting. For one, it challenged the exact perception that you're advocating: that Krugman takes strong stances on policy matters and uses strong language to defend them, to the detriment of the economics behind them. Interestingly, the piece pointed out that Krugman is usually the stereotypical economist -- quick to qualify and slow to make a strong policy statement witho…
There is a very common fallacy committed by people outside economics in thinking that Krugman has something substantial to say in areas of economics outside of his very narrow focus of expertise. Let's say you founded a successful advertising-based Web startup from a scratch and you exited for 8 digits. People who are only vaguely familiar with technology and computers (let's say nurses, taxi drivers, high school teachers) will now think you are an expert in pretty much all matters related to starting a business and computers. However, unless you are a pompous egoist, you should realize that your opinions, even in seemingly very related matters, like running a Web store or creating an iPhone app, will likely be quite uninformed. Krugman's opinions are about economic matters much further away from his true area of expertise than your opinions about running a Web store.
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read a piece on Krugman that was really interesting. For one, it challenged the exact perception that you're advocating: that Krugman takes strong stances on policy matters and uses strong language to defend them, to the detriment of the economics behind them. Interestingly, the piece pointed out that Krugman is usually the stereotypical economist -- quick to qualify and slow to make a strong policy statement witho…
There is a very common fallacy committed by people outside economics in thinking that Krugman has something substantial to say in areas of economics outside of his very narrow focus of expertise. Let's say you founded a successful advertising-based Web startup from a scratch and you exited for 8 digits. People who are only vaguely familiar with technology and computers (let's say nurses, taxi drivers, high school tea…
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Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read a piece on Krugman that was really interesting. For one, it challenged the exact perception that you're advocating: that Krugman takes strong stances on policy matters and uses strong language to defend them, to the detriment of the economics behind them. Interestingly, the piece pointed out that Krugman is usually the stereotypical economist -- quick to qualify and slow to make a strong policy statement witho…
There is a very common fallacy committed by people outside economics in thinking that Krugman has something substantial to say in areas of economics outside of his very narrow focus of expertise. Let's say you founded a successful advertising-based Web startup from a scratch and you exited for 8 digits. People who are only vaguely familiar with technology and computers (let's say nurses, taxi drivers, high school tea…
That's a somewhat strange example to use on a site hosted by Paul Graham, who writes about a pretty broad set of things, not all of them very strictly tied to the things he's particularly famous for.
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#29What's exciting to me is that Nate's got a voice in the NY Times. That the NY Times voice is suddenly more open, scientific, and math-centric in their political reporting. I hope the trend continues in other areas of the NYT.
This is not a new trend. The Times even offers a set of APIs:
Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com
#30For a second I got them confused with TwentyThreeSix and was momentarily excited.