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Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

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Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#121

Post by rurp »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #105
rurp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had complaints about 538, especially the early days, but don't understand this critique at all. A 30% chance hitting is completely unremarkable, and it was a perfectly reasonable reading of the evidence at the time. Nate isn't wrong that conventional wisdom was way off, with even supposedly statistical models giving Hillary a 99% chance of winning. Elections, like many things, have some inherent uncertainty. A seve…

I can't find the source anymore since 538 is no more, and I recall Nate even describing what could (and did) happen, which was that one swing state moving to the right had a high likelihood of them all moving to the right.

Yeah, Nate has talked a number of times about polling errors being correlated across states. In fact that's probably one of the most common mistakes models can make, treating correlated inputs as independent. There's a long history of that mistake in financial markets as well.

In 2024 the single most likely outcome his model had was trump winning all 7 swing states. The second most likely was Harris winning all 7.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#122

Post by zombittack »

At this point in my life I have zero patience or sympathy for the story of a man selling his company to a massive conglomerate and then feeling betrayed or somehow sad/regretful when said conglomerate destroys it or weaponizes it. I'm simply tired of this hindsight virtue signaling. They don't care about us. That means even you, Nate Silver. Btw was a big fan back then! Signal and the Noise was a great book.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#123

Post by applfanboysbgon »

pupppet wrote: post #118

Easy to go after Disney for this, but did Nate have to sell to ESPN to begin with? I've been burned too many times subscribing to services that go to shit because the owner wanted their payday. Let's stop (only) blaming the buyer.

He literally said he made the wrong choice by choosing ESPN, so he's in agreement with you.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#124

Post by applfanboysbgon »

zombittack wrote: post #122

At this point in my life I have zero patience or sympathy for the story of a man selling his company to a massive conglomerate and then feeling betrayed or somehow sad/regretful when said conglomerate destroys it or weaponizes it. I'm simply tired of this hindsight virtue signaling. They don't care about us. That means even you, Nate Silver. Btw was a big fan back then! Signal and the Noise was a great book.

> I'm simply tired of this hindsight virtue signaling.

Virtue signalling is a funny term. What, exactly, does it mean here? In what way is reminiscing about a venture that lasted 15 years of your life "virtue signalling"? It seems to be that word is trotted out as a meaningless cliche, something in the sense of "I don't like this thing, but I'll sound more sophisticated if I accuse it of this nebulous bad thing rather than just saying I don't like it".

The man is allowed to write a blog post about the final conclusion of a huge phase of his life. You don't have to give him your sympathy, but there's nothing wrong with writing about it.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#125

Post by Bratmon »

akio wrote: post #100
lacewing wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why this is surprising. People didn't go to FiveThirtyEight to marvel the science behind it. The science was just supposed to give you what you came there for: the actual election results. In the end, it turned out that predicting elections is still very hard, and that for all the fanfare, FiveThirtyEight performed only slightly better than what you could find in any other reputable newspaper, so i…

> FiveThirtyEight performed only slightly better than what you could find in any other reputable newspaper FiveThirtyEight gave Trump double the odds of the next highest reputable prediction, which was The New York Times Upshot (15%). Princeton Election Consortium gave Trump less than 1%. That is not "only slightly better" to anyone who's statistically literate. A FiveThirtyEight reader in 2016 was significantly bett…

This embodies what 538 and its defenders miss about 538's appeal:

People didn't come to 538 for explanations on subtle points of statistical literacy (although those were provided). They came because, for whatever reason, they wanted to know who would win the election.

People not trained in statistics treated like the scoreboard at a football game- it's always better to be winning, but score is a near perfect predictor in the last minute.

Once 538 stopped delivering perfect predictions and started delivering "Actually the difference between 1% and 30% are way bigger than you think" lectures, the appeal disappeared. There are better places to learn math from.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#126

Post by xmcp123 »

palata wrote: post #53
bellowsgulch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean everyone said he had a snowball’s chance in hell and then we ended up with him for two terms because the Democrats can’t stop fighting over the worse possible candidates to back that no one is asking for.

I find it interesting to blame it on the democrats. We ended up with him because enough people voted for him .

The Democrats reliably back the color "beige" as a candidate. Obama was different, and he won back to back. Biden succeeded, barely, because Trump was fresh in everyone's mind. But for some reason the Democrats have been allergic to charisma for far too long.

Voting in the US, it feels like I am forced to choose between evil and incompetence.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#127

Post by bsimpson »

ngriffiths wrote: post #72
rurp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had complaints about 538, especially the early days, but don't understand this critique at all. A 30% chance hitting is completely unremarkable, and it was a perfectly reasonable reading of the evidence at the time. Nate isn't wrong that conventional wisdom was way off, with even supposedly statistical models giving Hillary a 99% chance of winning. Elections, like many things, have some inherent uncertainty. A seve…

Discussion of stats models is always complicated by the fact that a lot of people will read "30%" as a "no" prediction and claim your model is wrong if the thing happens. On the one hand, one strategy is to "hide" the numbers a bit behind a blaring headline that says "we are not sure!!" It's a bit of an art to decide when to be "sure" or not. On the other hand, in research for example you can just say screw it, I car…

That's a core mechanic in games like Dispatch.

People don't like seeing a 95% chance of winning and then losing. The game tweaks the odds, so certain thresholds become gimmes (something like "if the displayed odds are better than 75%, treat them as 100%").

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#128

Post by fasterik »

zombittack wrote: post #122

At this point in my life I have zero patience or sympathy for the story of a man selling his company to a massive conglomerate and then feeling betrayed or somehow sad/regretful when said conglomerate destroys it or weaponizes it. I'm simply tired of this hindsight virtue signaling. They don't care about us. That means even you, Nate Silver. Btw was a big fan back then! Signal and the Noise was a great book.

There's value in making more people aware of something, even if it appears obvious to you. It's possible that someone who doesn't share your views on Disney, or corporations more broadly, might have been familiar with FiveThirtyEight and will have their views changed by Nate Silver's account of the situation. There's also nothing wrong with someone reflecting on something they worked on for over a decade and identifying things they could have done differently.

Ironically, your comment adds nothing to the discussion other than virtue signaling that you're "in the know" on this subject.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#129

Post by pupppet »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #123
pupppet wrote: post #118

Easy to go after Disney for this, but did Nate have to sell to ESPN to begin with? I've been burned too many times subscribing to services that go to shit because the owner wanted their payday. Let's stop (only) blaming the buyer.

He literally said he made the wrong choice by choosing ESPN, so he's in agreement with you.

The focus of the stories making the rounds about this are not about Nate having made some mistake, they're about big bad Disney deleting someone's work (which yes is also true).

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#130

Post by robotresearcher »

nostrademons wrote: post #64
chao- wrote: post #13

>The Times was also in the midst of a leadership transition, and new management tends to want to move on from the old regime’s pet projects, even if they were successful. Learning about B2B sales over the years, the size of this leadership-change factor has been among the most eye-opening (and among the most disappointing). It cuts both ways: You can have a successful pilot that doesn't proceed because this-or-that V…

> I would love to have later learned that leaders who evaluate opportunities separate from personal attachment are seen as more efficient, better, and selected favorably; that more successful companies are less subject to this sort of political/careerist whimsy. My experience is that it's the opposite: the more successful the company is, the more prone it is to flights of executive whimsy. At more successful companie…

> the more successful the company is, the more prone it is to flights of executive whimsy

Apple's Liquid Glass comes to mind.

The design exec responsible suddenly left Apple for Meta, a company rather less esteemed for design, and Apple still hasn't acknowledged this failure or backtracked.

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