Wednesday

Election predictions


In case you might have missed it, once again Nate Silver correctly predicted the outcome of the election. You can follow his thoughtful description of his model and regular updates on his blog.

I am reading Silver's book, "The Signal and the Noise," now, and will post a review sometime next week. In the meantime, here is a post describing Silver's outcome (and response) in various media. (That's a screenshot of graphic artist Christoph Niemann's take on it.) Basically,
Not a bad night for the math nerds. However, the truth—which Silver would readily admit—is that he didn't really "predict" anything. The math did ... and the math was based on polls, which are also based on math. He pulled them all together and came back with a number, which was very useful (and comforting to Democrats), but not magic. 
 And here is an Atlantic.com post showing how various pundits' predictions succeeded (or, in most cases, did not).

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