I really enjoyed 538 in its heyday, and am glad to see Nate carry on with some of the work. I know he can be a polarizing in some circles, but keeping the data angle visible helps smooth some of the rougher edges of following politics sometimes.
A few words about FiveThirtyEight
21–30 of 140 posts
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#22[flagged]
You mean polls like this that put Clinton 15% ahead? https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/20... I think there’s a stronger argument that those polls were intended to suppress Trump voters into thinking they were not the majority (when in fact they were).
Are you saying that Trump won the popular vote in 2016?
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#23I really enjoyed 538 in its heyday, and am glad to see Nate carry on with some of the work. I know he can be a polarizing in some circles, but keeping the data angle visible helps smooth some of the rougher edges of following politics sometimes.
I learned more from the reaction to Nate and 538’s forecasts than 538 itself. It helped me appreciate how journalists misunderstand and distort basic probability. If a model predicts A, B, and C as having 34%, 33%, and 33% likelihood respectively, the typical report is “538 predicts ‘A’ will win!” and they got it totally wrong when B or C is the victor. Interpretations of 538 were further fuelled by whatever political bias a pundit was coming from.
In a world where Kevin Rose can reboot Digg, Nate has every chance of acquiring and reviving 538. Good luck to Nate.
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#24As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these polls and spit out some data. It's easy to hand wave and think some new information is being revealed, but ultimately it is just a "garbage in garbage out" situation - you are entering polls as input, some hand waving is going on, and you get some forecast as a result.
I think part of my cynicism comes in the wake of the 2016 election, in which the forecast rightfully counted some scenarios in which either candidate could win, upon which conclusion of the model was basically "the result fits in with the forecast, because either candidate could have won according to the model" - in which case I personally concluded, if no matter what the result, we can always just say "the candidate who won could always have won given the forecast" - what are we really adding to the conversation here? We can simply look at polls and understand who is generally ahead, and not be any better or worse off.
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#25I already miss the approval charts over time. Where the best place to see those, now?
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#26[flagged]
You mean polls like this that put Clinton 15% ahead? https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/20... I think there’s a stronger argument that those polls were intended to suppress Trump voters into thinking they were not the majority (when in fact they were).
Clinton won the popular vote by about 3 million votes in 2016.
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#27Glad to hear they will revive the NBA part. Was using the model extensively. It was very informative.
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#28As someone who was super interested in the 538-style of election coverage in 2008, I've kind of fallen "out of love" so to speak with election models and forecasting in general. I'm not really convinced about what it adds to the conversation around elections. We can all look at various polls and get an assessment of who is generally ahead. Weighted polling aggregators and forecasting models just collect all these pol…
agreed on all points
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
538's final forecast was Kamala 50%, Trump 49%. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
Nobody who thinks they can pin a probability on an event that only gets sampled once should ever be taken seriously.
Have you ever heard of a brier score?
Or bayes theorem, and bayseian inference?
You might change your mind if you investigate those topics.
Re: A few words about FiveThirtyEight
#30I really enjoyed 538 in its heyday, and am glad to see Nate carry on with some of the work. I know he can be a polarizing in some circles, but keeping the data angle visible helps smooth some of the rougher edges of following politics sometimes.
I really enjoy Nate's podcast with Maria Konnikova - I read her book The Biggest Bluff a few years back and really enjoyed it, and them podcasting together is great. (Despite my feelings about never wanting to hear Malcolm Gladwell's voice ever again, as he's omnipresent in Pushkin podcast network ads, which seem to be the worst of the entire podcasting ecosystem).
I never really followed the "Nate Silver" controversy after 2016, but it basically seems to boil down to a bunch of liberals being mad because they felt lied to for no apparent reason.