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FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

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Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#31

Post by materielle »

patcon wrote: post #14
internet2000 wrote: post #13

I'm seeing a lot about this. What makes this situation different than any other website going offline?

I think it's the fivethirtyeight of of historical significance, and Disney is one of the largest and wealthiest companies on the planet. So it's just kinda like "whoa, this is stratospheric negligence" or "whoa, what is the reason for this... assuming they are not idiots?"

Also, they don’t any plans for the IP, and Nate would’ve paid above-market rate just to take over and preserve the content for posterity. He estimates that they deleted 200,000 hours of human labor.

This is just some Disney suits being extraordinarily petty.

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#32

Post by materielle »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #17

Those 2015-16 ones sure aged poorly, I'm reminded of this https://i.imgur.com/6Z9QQj3.jpeg This is why people don't really buy the "but he had Trump at 30%, you just don't understand statistics" apologist line. Sure he hedged in the dying days of the campaign (a cynic might think to try to protect his credibility), but the tone overall was of a person who comprehensively failed to understand the mood of the country f…

He didn’t hedge at the end. Nate always writes the models before election season then doesn’t touch them apart from actual bug fixes. The model actually organically predicted 30%.

I still think that’s about accurate. Maybe it should’ve been 40%.

Everyone forgets that it was a pretty close election. Clinton could’ve won without the Comey announcement.

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#33

Post by stinkbeetle »

f1ay wrote: post #19
stinkbeetle wrote: post #17

Those 2015-16 ones sure aged poorly, I'm reminded of this https://i.imgur.com/6Z9QQj3.jpeg This is why people don't really buy the "but he had Trump at 30%, you just don't understand statistics" apologist line. Sure he hedged in the dying days of the campaign (a cynic might think to try to protect his credibility), but the tone overall was of a person who comprehensively failed to understand the mood of the country f…

I think Nate did a phenomenal job calling out pollsters in that time. Since 538 was predominately a poll aggregator that did tricky stats to rank the reliability of each poll. I remember specifically an interview with him griping about some of the unusual data he was seeing from pollsters that made it look like, and I quote, 'Someone has their finger on the scales'

Perhaps critiquing statistical methods used by polling was something he was good at. I have no real opinion of his work there, which I didn't pay attention to.

But predicting an election requires a lot more than polling datasets and statistics textbooks. That's the problem that he made himself out to be an election prediction wizard, but really that was off the back of his good prediction in quite a bland and conventional election.

When things got slightly more spicy and reality diverged from his vaunted "models", his "data science" predictably fell in a heap. The worst thing is almost not even that he got it wrong, it's that he seemed incapable of recognizing that present reality was quite significantly different from the past data he had used to build his models. Even after being wrong in so many of these predictions. He just kept churning out these pieces about how Trump was probably finished this time.

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#34

Post by bonsai_spool »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #33
f1ay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Nate did a phenomenal job calling out pollsters in that time. Since 538 was predominately a poll aggregator that did tricky stats to rank the reliability of each poll. I remember specifically an interview with him griping about some of the unusual data he was seeing from pollsters that made it look like, and I quote, 'Someone has their finger on the scales'

Perhaps critiquing statistical methods used by polling was something he was good at. I have no real opinion of his work there, which I didn't pay attention to. But predicting an election requires a lot more than polling datasets and statistics textbooks. That's the problem that he made himself out to be an election prediction wizard, but really that was off the back of his good prediction in quite a bland and convent…

Okay, this is clearly an LLM response, but for the sake of being polite:

> But predicting an election requires a lot more than polling datasets and statistics textbooks. That's the problem that he made himself out to be an election prediction wizard, but really that was off the back of his good prediction in quite a bland and conventional election.

> When things got slightly more spicy and reality diverged from his vaunted "models", his "data science" predictably fell in a heap

The models were correct in two elections - arguably three because a 30% chance means that an outcome will occur in thirty times out of hundred. That is not zero.

To the person who is running this LLM, please find better things to do with yourself.

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#35

Post by stinkbeetle »

materielle wrote: post #32
stinkbeetle wrote: post #17

Those 2015-16 ones sure aged poorly, I'm reminded of this https://i.imgur.com/6Z9QQj3.jpeg This is why people don't really buy the "but he had Trump at 30%, you just don't understand statistics" apologist line. Sure he hedged in the dying days of the campaign (a cynic might think to try to protect his credibility), but the tone overall was of a person who comprehensively failed to understand the mood of the country f…

He didn’t hedge at the end. Nate always writes the models before election season then doesn’t touch them apart from actual bug fixes. The model actually organically predicted 30%. I still think that’s about accurate. Maybe it should’ve been 40%. Everyone forgets that it was a pretty close election. Clinton could’ve won without the Comey announcement.

I think he did hedge (or "strategically bug fix"). The prediction for Trump went from IIRC around 15 to 30 in the last week or so. It was a big swing, IIRC with a lot of waffle around why it happened but not a lot of verifiable fact.

> I still think that’s about accurate. Maybe it should’ve been 40%.

It wasn't accurate. This is something people misunderstand about these predictions. If the 2016 election was held 100 times, Trump would have won 100 times. It's not the same as rolling dice.

These election predictions don't say that. They say something like "the observations I have agree with scenarios that have Clinton winning, 70% of the time". Which is fine and correct as far as his data and model goes, but none of those scenarios were the reality he was trying to predict. They are all just figments of the model though. Getting down to the brass tacks, he predicted Clinton would win, and he was wrong.

Which is fine, we just can't know anything about his process from that failure. Certainly we can't conclude that it was "accurate", since it was not. If we had a good sample of elections where he used the same process and built up a good record then sure.

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#36

Post by stinkbeetle »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #34
stinkbeetle wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps critiquing statistical methods used by polling was something he was good at. I have no real opinion of his work there, which I didn't pay attention to. But predicting an election requires a lot more than polling datasets and statistics textbooks. That's the problem that he made himself out to be an election prediction wizard, but really that was off the back of his good prediction in quite a bland and convent…

Okay, this is clearly an LLM response, but for the sake of being polite: > But predicting an election requires a lot more than polling datasets and statistics textbooks. That's the problem that he made himself out to be an election prediction wizard, but really that was off the back of his good prediction in quite a bland and conventional election. > When things got slightly more spicy and reality diverged from his v…

[flagged]

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#39

Post by bonsai_spool »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #36
bonsai_spool wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, this is clearly an LLM response, but for the sake of being polite: > But predicting an election requires a lot more than polling datasets and statistics textbooks. That's the problem that he made himself out to be an election prediction wizard, but really that was off the back of his good prediction in quite a bland and conventional election. > When things got slightly more spicy and reality diverged from his v…

[flagged]

> bviously you don't believe that yourself, you're just incapable of a coherent response to the post

I definitely think a human was involved in signing up for the account and occasionally checks in.

I think my response was plenty coherent.

Re: FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

#40

Post by stinkbeetle »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #39
stinkbeetle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> bviously you don't believe that yourself, you're just incapable of a coherent response to the post I definitely think a human was involved in signing up for the account and occasionally checks in. I think my response was plenty coherent.

[flagged]
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