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FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#31

Post by philwelch »

spec wrote: post #14
aamar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that we should be thoughtful of the misses as well as the hits, and he's had some misses. However, I didn't recall Silver getting the special MA Senate election of Scott Brown wrong, and he seems not to have: ( http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/538-model-posits-brow... ). It would have been surprising if he did, since it was an easy one. Were you thinking of a different election?

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."

The facts of the matter at that time were different from the facts of the matter when Scott Brown eventually won. When you come out and say it's only 20% probable for a given outcome to happen, and that outcome happens, it doesn't mean you were wrong, it just means a long shot happened. In fact, you would expect just about exactly 1 out of every 5 20% longshots to end up happening.

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#32

Post by philwelch »

spec wrote: post #24
wtallis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

"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."

Silver doesn't make "predictions", he gives odds. Giving odds implicitly admits that there exists a chance of beating those odds, and attempts to quantify how big or small that chance is. Sure, improbable things happen. That does not make them not improbable. Really, if someone is giving probabilities, you don't just count how many times the lower-probability events happened against him, you take all of his 20% probabilities and look to see whether about 20% of them ended up happening.

Look at it the other way--if all of Nate Silver's "predictions" came true, he'd be way more wrong than if some of them didn't come true, because he's not predicting things with 100% probability! Of all the things he thinks are 70% likely to happen, he's just as wrong if 100% of them happen as if 40% of them happen--he's only right if 70% of his 70% shots happen!

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#33

Post by lionhearted »

kenjackson wrote: post #6
spec wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about his failure in predicting UK elections results, US unemployment rate, Maine's same sex marriage vote, special Senate elections in Massachusetts? These are just a few examples that I remember. But then the NY Times thinks that Krugman deserves the coverage too...

You do realize that even people who have incredibly good prediction records, do get things wrong. You can't really point to a specific thing and say, "you suck because you didn't predict this". Look at the totality of their record. And Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, and numerous other awards for his work in Economics. I honestly think you'd be hardpressed to find a more qualified economist (on matters of eco…

> And Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, and numerous other awards for his work in Economics. I honestly think you'd be hardpressed to find a more qualified economist (on matters of economics).

Krugman's Nobel work was on international trade, and it's lightyears different from his popular work. Outside of international trade, I'd say if you compared him to someone like John Forbes Nash or Vilfredo Pareto, you'd find him sorely lacking. His Nobel is arguably well deserved, but his popular stuff is not Nobel-quality economic work and shouldn't be mistaken for it.

Edit: This is all tangential to the Silver discussion. I like Nate Silver, he seems like a smart guy who explains things well and it's very cool he's moving over to a larger platform.

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#36

Post by spec »

philwelch wrote: post #32
spec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

"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." Silver doesn't make "predictions", he gives odds. Giving odds implicitly admits that there exists a chance of beating those odds, and attempts to quantify how big or small that chance is. Sure, improbable things ha…

You are absolutely and factually wrong. He absolutely calls them predictions when he is right. Here is a direct quote from Silver: "predicting 49 of 50 states correctly in the presidential election." http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/welcome-...

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#37

Post by pkulak »

lionhearted wrote: post #33
kenjackson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that even people who have incredibly good prediction records, do get things wrong. You can't really point to a specific thing and say, "you suck because you didn't predict this". Look at the totality of their record. And Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, and numerous other awards for his work in Economics. I honestly think you'd be hardpressed to find a more qualified economist (on matters of eco…

> And Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, and numerous other awards for his work in Economics. I honestly think you'd be hardpressed to find a more qualified economist (on matters of economics). Krugman's Nobel work was on international trade, and it's lightyears different from his popular work. Outside of international trade, I'd say if you compared him to someone like John Forbes Nash or Vilfredo Pareto, you'd…

It's still a Nobel prize in economics. John Carmack made his name writing 3D games, but if he was standing behind me while I was writing some web code and had some ideas for me, I wouldn't tell him to piss off because he's a game programmer.

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#38

Post by philwelch »

spec wrote: post #36
philwelch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." Silver doesn't make "predictions", he gives odds. Giving odds implicitly admits that there exists a chance of beating those odds, and attempts to quantify how big or small that chance is. Sure, improbable things ha…

You are absolutely and factually wrong. He absolutely calls them predictions when he is right. Here is a direct quote from Silver: "predicting 49 of 50 states correctly in the presidential election." http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/welcome-...

OK--he does, in fact, use the word "prediction", but on the same token, he's still fairly open about his predictions being probabilistic in nature, and about the predictions changing over time as more evidence is presented.

But you're going to have to do better than pounce on my word choice if you want to prove your point.

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#39

Post by andre3k1 »

kenjackson wrote: post #6
spec wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about his failure in predicting UK elections results, US unemployment rate, Maine's same sex marriage vote, special Senate elections in Massachusetts? These are just a few examples that I remember. But then the NY Times thinks that Krugman deserves the coverage too...

You do realize that even people who have incredibly good prediction records, do get things wrong. You can't really point to a specific thing and say, "you suck because you didn't predict this". Look at the totality of their record. And Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, and numerous other awards for his work in Economics. I honestly think you'd be hardpressed to find a more qualified economist (on matters of eco…

As someone who has spent the better part of their life studying economics, I would have to disagree. Krugman is by no means a respected economist. I would even go as far as to say that he is regarded as being a laughing stock in our field.

Search "Nobel Krugman Fraud." Better yet, here's a direct link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson229.html

Re: FiveThirtyEight relaunches on NYTimes.com

#40

Post by wlievens »

pkulak wrote: post #37
lionhearted wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Krugman has a Nobel Prize in Economics, and numerous other awards for his work in Economics. I honestly think you'd be hardpressed to find a more qualified economist (on matters of economics). Krugman's Nobel work was on international trade, and it's lightyears different from his popular work. Outside of international trade, I'd say if you compared him to someone like John Forbes Nash or Vilfredo Pareto, you'd…

It's still a Nobel prize in economics. John Carmack made his name writing 3D games, but if he was standing behind me while I was writing some web code and had some ideas for me, I wouldn't tell him to piss off because he's a game programmer.

It would be very creepy to have Carmack standing behind you all the time.
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