Daily Beast: Why Is Nate Silver So Afraid of Sam Wang?

[RandySF]

Here’s my guess at the reasons why. First, Silver fears Wang. In 2012, Wang’s model did a better job predicting the presidential election. Wang called not only Obama’s electoral college total of 332 votes, which Silver matched, but he also nailed the popular vote almost perfectly. Wang’s model also picked the winner in every single Senate race in 2012. It’s not good for business if Silver keeps coming up second-best.

But more importantly, Wang is the only one predicting Democrats will win. This represents a huge risk for Silver. If every forecaster had Republicans taking the Senate, then they’d all be either right or wrong in November; no one would have a better headline the next morning than Silver. There might be differences in the accuracy of predictions for each seat, but there’d be little embarrassment for Silver even if someone else happened to hit closer to the mark in a few races.

Yet with Wang in the picture, that’s not the case. If the Democrats hold the Senate, then Wang will stand alone; Silver will just be another one of the many who got it wrong. As of this writing, Silver’s own forecast says there’s a 41 percent chance this will happen. Imagine that -- a 41 percent chance that the whole empire comes crashing down.

This is why Silver hasn't spent much time dissing The Washington Post. Last week, the newspaper gave the Republicans a 77percent chance of winning; for Silver it was 58 percent, and for Wang it was 42 percent. That’s right -- the gap between Silver’s forecast and the Post’s was even wider than his gap with Wang. The big difference was that the Post posed no threat to Silver if Republicans won; he would have been right as well.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/06/why-is-nate-silver-so-afraid-of-sam-wang.html

[MohRokTah]

1. Wang was also much more accurate in the 2010 mid terms than Silver.

Furthermore, Wang has much better academic statistics chops than Silver.

All of this adds up to a huge issue for Silver.

I think he saw the political writing on the wall which is why he moved on to do more with sports.

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. What disturbs me about this conflict is ...

WHY? If Silver (or any statistician) is confident in their methodology, why trash someone else ... time will tell.

Sadly, celebrity and ego don't mix well in academia.

[Jim Lane]

5. The "Daily Beast" article overstates the trashing aspect.

I'd say the "why" is that Silver is a nerd, Wang is a nerd, and that means that they devote a lot of time and energy (and, in both cases, brilliance) to the questions they tackle. See, I mean "nerd" in a good way -- they both get excited about ideas, a trait I admire.

I haven't read all the back-and-forth, but I read this article by Silver and this response by Wang. Both pieces talk about the minutiae of forecasting an election, rather than about personalities. I'll admit that there's also a strong element of competition between two prognosticators, but the Daily Beast focused only on the personalities. It devoted almost no attention to the technical issues these two experts were debating.

You're right that both of them could have just waited for the election. They didn't, though, because they both really get into discussing how to crunch these numbers to produce an estimated probability. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't buy the analysis that Silver is "afraid" of Wang.

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Nor do I ...

I don't buy the analysis that Silver is "afraid" of Wang.

Afraid is a strong term.

You raise some good points. I'm afraid I've caught the dreaded 21st century ailment ... "Mediamanufactureddramaitis"! I guess my vaccination (of wide reading and witnessing the media's M.O.) didn't take.

[Faux pas]

2. Kickin'

[progressoid]

4. Here's Wang's response to Nate's criticism of the Princeton Election Consortium approach

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2014/10/06/sam_wang_factchecks_nate_silver.html

[Chathamization]

7. You can’t run one test and say the outcome shows the odds are actually 60-40 and not 40-60. Wang

said this himself – both he and Silver are essentially saying the race is a tossup in terms of who is going to control the Senate. Wang’s stated that part of the problem is that people round everything over 50% up to 100%, so instead of reading “Wang and Silver both see it as a toss-up” they read “Wang says the Dems will keep the Senate, Silver says the Repubs will take it.”

Wang’s other criticisms of Silver –Silver’s fundamentals are subjective junk that don’t add anything, Silver has percentages that are too high for high-end GOP victory conditions, Silver misrepresents Wang’s methods – are pretty important, and will stand no matter who takes the Senate. Election prediction methods are still pretty dynamic, too. Last fall Wang thought there might be a good chance the Democrats could take the House (based on anger over the GOP’s shutdown).