Nate Silver Freak Out
Over at POLITICO:
Nate Silver rages at Huffington Post editor in 14-part tweetstorm
It began with “This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible,” and got only somewhat more polite from there.
Nate Silver unloaded Saturday on the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim, who accused the polling guru and founder of the prediction website fivethirtyeight.com of “changing the results of polls to fit where he thinks the polls truly are, rather than simply entering the poll numbers into his model and crunching them.”
Rather than taking a simple average -- like RealClearPolitics does -- Silver’s model weights polls by his team’s assessment of their quality, and also performs several “adjustments” to account for things like the partisan “lean” of a pollster or the trend lines across different polls.
According to Grim, however, Silver is “just guessing” and his “trend line adjustment” technique is “merely political punditry dressed up as sophisticated mathematical modeling.” Grim also noted that FiveThirtyEight’s model -- due to his adjustments -- shows Trump more likely than not to win Florida, while the Huffington Post’s calculates her victory there as more likely.
Here's his Twitter page if you want to follow the whole rash of posts.
Here's the F-bomb:
This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible. https://t.co/VNp02CvxlI
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) 5 November 2016
Comments
Why does the math hate Hillary? n/t
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Mathogynism...
is a serious problem.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Mathogyny? Mahogany? n/t
.
There are a few things that 538 does that I don't fully grasp.
Trend lines are one of them. I understand why they are using trend lines on old data, but if all the state surveys are recent (and if they aren't recent, don't count them!), then the trend line concept seems irrelevant. Adding +2 to Donald Trump when a poll just came out yesterday doesn't really make sense to me (of course, the way they create trend lines is also problematic; they should be looking at time panel data to make adjustments).
Also, I don't understand how Google Consumer Surveys has a B either. Google Consumer Surveys (in some states!) has such a strong pro-Hillary bias that it makes the whole outfit look like a sham. They are the worst in Kansas, where in October, they've showed Clinton up by as much as 19!
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/kansas/
A literal war of words. Hahhaa
Poor misunderstood Nate.
Hey look what else I just saw at HuffBlow.
Hillary Clinton Won’t Face Charges For New Emails, FBI Director Tells Congress
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/james-comey-congress-emails_us_581f8...
Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
With regard to the FBI, I think we should be prepared
to see a lot more of Clinton's dirty dealings become public because a significant minority of special agents hate what Comey is doing to the bureau's reputation. It's tomorrow or never.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
And then there's Trey Gowdy's committee in Congress
Who will be doing nonstop investigations all through Clinton's term.
99%
If you say so Nate.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Polls and the Unskewing Thereof
In 2010 when the polls were all showing that the Democrats were going to lose badly I was one of those arguing that the pollsters were underrepresenting cell phone users, and that turnout among younger, more Democratic voters would make for a more balanced result. The polls were right, the Democrats went down in flames.
In 2012 we all watched the Republicans desperately unskewing the polls to show that Romney would win, to the point the Romney didn't bother writing a concession speech. After 2010 I was ready to accept the polls, and they were right and we got Obama's second term.
So generally I think polling works and the technique of aggregating polls improves the result.
In this cycle I don't believe anything remains uncorrupted, and there is nothing sacred about polling that would make it the one remaining bastion of integrity. I've been watching polls and have my own opinions about which states will be won by which candidate, and anybody telling me that they have The Math can go sit with Carl Rove.
I played with an online election map today and plugged in my predictions. You know what I came up with? Clinton 270, Trump 268. Seriously. I think it's that close. If I'm right then any state that flips could change the outcome.
My pivot state is Pennsylvania, where Clinton has shown a modest but solid lead outside the margin of error. If the polls are legit and she wins it, you can go to bed. If Trump manages an upset there, it'll be a long night.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
Also, exit polls are needed as an empirical validity check. n/t
Which is why there won't be any
At least I'm under the impression they were killed off before the CA primary and will not return.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
Clintonistas will make exit polling illegal
Ohio just apparently made it illegal.
Given that Trump seems to have the upper hand in the state based on polling, it will be interesting to see if Hillary wins Ohio instead.
For months after Chernobyl, journalists and environmentalists
in Germany teamed up to publish newspaper listings giving the radiation level (in becquerel, bq, per unit weight) measured for various food items on store shelves.
NGOs and ordinary citizens were going around with geiger counters and collecting their own data — well, the government thought, we can’t have that. Big Ag’s business might be impacted by “irresponsible reporting.” They tried to pass a law saying only “licensed, authorized sources” could have geiger counters. Having independent results from “amateurs” circulating among the populace, they said, was likely to spread “confusion” and “panic.”
This election has rendered polls and polling as useless
Why? Because no one on either side wants to admit who it is they are voting for. There are more last minute undecideds in this election than ever before, I'd wager. Coin flip. If anything definitively decides it for Clinton, it will be a
riggedunduly influenced electoral college. After everything I've seen today, they will not let Trump win."I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
We exist inside a simulation
The fact that with the duopoly the votes are so neatly split, suggests algorithmic distribution even though we think we are in charge. Also see this [video:https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE]
Food for thought...
Truly
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
Huffpost is even worse than TOP
So even mathematical models from a pollster who is not thought as a rabid right winger is not allowed and he must be thrown under the bus. Huffpost also pushes big time the Trump/Putin connection. With this type of rabid support from a major supposedly liberal site, how exactly is Hillary ever going to be pressed to go move left if she is elected?
The subjective factor vitiates 538 reliability 100%
And that, folks, is a statistical certainty.
Nate Silver has proven to be an alchemist, turning silver into shit.
By introducing a subjective analysis of poll reliability in order to rank them, bias is of necessity introduced. Maybe polls should be ranked somehow by criteria such as sample size, cohort sampled (age, economic class, racial factors, pst history of voting, etc.) I don't see this as happening. In all the online polls I have seen, Trump wins big (or should I say "bigly")
I'm not sure that's what alchemists were
actually trying to do, Ed.
Based on a lot
of things - like Rallies and those damned Emails - one would think The Donald has this in the bag. Instead, the polls say HRC by a landslide. My money is on Her Highness by a squeaker - 3-4% - only becuz her team can and will "fix" it.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.