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Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

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Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#71

Post by sendos »

Thrymr wrote: post #66
sendos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, I use the data from electoral-vote.com to turn it into a probability of winning the election at http://prespredict.com

I like that your site shows the 2008 history right below the 2012 (although it is distracting that the scale in time is different between them). I couldn't even find that comparison when I looked for it on Nate Silver's site. I'm curious about the methodology as well. Why didn't you choose more standard gaussian statistics for the differences, instead of the combination linear/step model? How much difference would it…

In this plot http://imgur.com/BAEie you can see the difference between a gaussian model and the model I use for the translating state poll differences into probabilities of winning that state.

I prefer to have the flat region of 50% probability when the state poll difference is small, which the gaussian model doesn't have, to take into account (a) the various errors in the polling data and (b) the likelihood that people's minds can change by the time the election comes.

As to how much difference it would make, with the current model, Obama's probability is now at 81%, whereas with the Gaussian model it would be around 95%.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#72

Post by Alex3917 »

tptacek wrote: post #39
andrewljohnson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It correlates! Global warming, 2/3 Republican deny it, more than 3/4 Democrats believe it: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-30/global-warming-l... Creationism is 38% for Democrats, 60% for Republicans: http://www.cultureofscience.com/2011/08/19/republicans-and-d... I think Republicans are more likely not to want to mention or distribute condoms to teens in sex education, but I don't regard this as quite the s…

This is a little silly. Intelligent people could easily vote for the candidate of the party that is toughest on public-sector unions for one office and the candidate who is most supportive of a carbon tax for another office, believing both that public sector unions and their pension commitments are out of control and in anthropogenic global warming, and make those choices dependent on the impact those beliefs have on…

The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time. So why the hell would you vote Republican if you were against the pensions?

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#73

Post by btilly »

MartinCron wrote: post #69
btilly wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution tells you that a fossil of a given type cannot be older than ancestral types, and is unlikely to be younger than descendant types. That sandwiches the age fairly nicely. But if you want a prediction that applies to geology, evolution predicted - long before physical mechanisms were known for it - that specific land masses must have been connected in the distant past. And even put approximate dates on the co…

Just a nit-pick: Continental Drift is the theory that the continents were floating on the ocean and has been replaced by plate tectonics. It's not right to say that theory is correct, even though it does align with the facts about Pangea, etc.

If you're going to nitpick, choose your words carefully. :-P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift puts it, Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other by appearing to drift across the ocean bed. Note that "appearing to drift" and "floating on the ocean" are very, very different things. A trivial comparison of rocks and water demonstrates that "floating on the ocean" would be inconceivable for something natural that is as big as a continent.

That said, plate tectonics is a much better theory. But I would say that it has the same relation to continental drift that Newtonian mechanics has to Special Relativity. The theory is clearly wrong, but the succeeding theory explains why the less detailed theory appears to work.

Furthermore plate tectonics is itself a theory that in due course of time will be (and to some extent already has been) replaced by something more complete. For instance consider Hawaii. We have a chain of islands that is produced by the movement of the Pacific plate over a hot spot. What creates these hot spots? What role do they have in pushing plate tectonics? A theory that explains all of this will be undoubtably differ in detail from the original theory of plate tectonics, though it will have to explain why plate tectonics seemed to work.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#74

Post by tptacek »

Alex3917 wrote: post #72
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a little silly. Intelligent people could easily vote for the candidate of the party that is toughest on public-sector unions for one office and the candidate who is most supportive of a carbon tax for another office, believing both that public sector unions and their pension commitments are out of control and in anthropogenic global warming, and make those choices dependent on the impact those beliefs have on…

The Republicans are the ones responsible for the ridiculous union pensions, because those were what they offered in concession during the 60s and 70s instead of paying the workers a fair wage at the time. So why the hell would you vote Republican if you were against the pensions?

Is that a serious question? Scott Walker is a Republican, not a Democrat. Also, the GOP of 2012 bears little relationship to the GOP of 1965. Barry Goldwater was practically on the fringe of the 1960's GOP. What party would Nelson Rockefeller belong to in 2012?

You can vote a specific interest, you can vote a straight party line, you can vote out of ignorance. But one thing that makes zero sense is to vote party-line in 2012 to punish a party for what it did 60 years ago. Doing that has literally the opposite impact as you'd ostensibly intend.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#75

Post by sendos »

tricolon wrote: post #70
sendos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, I use the data from electoral-vote.com to turn it into a probability of winning the election at http://prespredict.com

Nice site! On the front page, when I hover of the 2008 graph, I see stats for Obama/Romney rather than Obama/McCain.

Thanks for catching that! I just fixed it.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#76

Post by wtallis »

adestefan wrote: post #64
spamizbad wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the proof is in the pudding. His performance on the 2008 and 2010 election indicate to me he's not some partisan hack. He accurately predicted all of the EVs Obama obtained in 2008 with the exception of Indiana (which was quite close - only a few hundred votes in the margin IIRC). He did exceptionally well in 2010, coming in 3rd for accuracy behind Survey USA and PPP (A democratic shop, incidentally) in house ra…

Rasmussen is well known to have a decent conservative slant because of the way they select their population and perform their polling. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide if this is intentional or not.

While Rasmussen seems biased in the strict technical sense, it's otherwise relatively low-variance high-quality data, so the bias can be corrected for, leaving you with useful information.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#77

Post by MartinCron »

btilly wrote: post #73
MartinCron wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a nit-pick: Continental Drift is the theory that the continents were floating on the ocean and has been replaced by plate tectonics. It's not right to say that theory is correct, even though it does align with the facts about Pangea, etc.

If you're going to nitpick, choose your words carefully. :-P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift puts it, Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other by appearing to drift across the ocean bed. Note that "appearing to drift" and "floating on the ocean" are very, very different things. A trivial comparison of rocks and water demonstrates that "floating on the ocean" wo…

OK, I stand corrected. I thought the continental drift was a more literal and less poetic theory. That's what I get for nit-picking.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#78

Post by waterlesscloud »

mkramlich wrote: post #58
andrewljohnson wrote: post #7

Republicans say Nate Silver is a biased liberal, and reading his blog this election cycle makes it seem that way to me even. But I would like to know - is there a Republican analog to Nate Silver? Someone who predicts 90% of the races at the end, does the meta-math, and has a computer model? If there is no Republican analog, can you possibly say Nate Silver is liberal or biased? Does using a computer model and math,…

Reminds me of the meme "reality has a well-known liberal bias". I don't know or suspect whether that's true or not. But I have noticed personally in life that whenever someone is both intelligent, educated, is compassionate/empathic and does long-term thinking, that person also seems to be "liberal", progressive or left-leaning, politics wise. Perhaps not always. But most of the time, based on my observations. I thin…

What would you say about the tens of millions of Americans who are educated, religious, and give hundreds of millions of dollars to build schools, clinics, and missions around the world?

Are they short-sighted or lacking compassion?

I think this kind of binary political thinking is the most insidious thought virus we face. Far more dangerous than whether or not someone believes in evolution, because it separates us and makes us believe that the "others" have traits that they really don't have. It's awful.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#79

Post by wdr1 »

derleth wrote: post #55
joshuahedlund wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but only if you also ignore the scientific consensus on genetically modified food, vaccines, nuclear energy, and hydraulic fracking :)

I'd deny that anti-vaccine idiocy is part of the Democratic platform the same way anthropogenic global warming denialism is part of the Republican party platform. Do you have any evidence it is? I also don't know about anti-GMO idiocy, frankly.

But frankly, there isn't anything in the GOP platform that is anthropogenic global warming denialism:

http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_America/

Rather, many of those associated with the party do it, which is congruent with what he said about anti-GMO & anti-vaccine idiocy.

Re: Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things

#80

Post by anamax »

derleth wrote: post #56
anamax wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does following the scientific consensus on issues like anthropogenic global warming, evolution, and sex education make you a Democrat? The correlation is with misunderstanding all three and coming to bogus conclusions. Let's take evolution. There are lots of folks, typically Democrats, who insist that it is fundamental to all of science. (Hint - that's clearly false. Disagree? How does evolution matter outside biol…

> Hint - that's clearly false. Disagree? How does evolution matter outside biology? Too hard? Name three biology subfields that don't work without evolution? Too hard? Name three things in biology that were predicted using evolution? Gish Galloping wins you no support. It's a dishonest tactic that attempts to flood the opposition with questions that require more time to answer than they do to ask. It's a Denial of Se…

> Because Akin was minimizing rape.

No, he wasn't. He was trying to respond to the "what about rape" argument wrt abortion.

I'm pro-abortion, but he's correct in saying that only a small fraction of abortions have anything to do with rape. (That said, age of consent and under the influence rape don't involve "negative mental state" that his argument requires.) I don't think that that fact is relevant, but it's dishonest to say that it isn't true.

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