People Who Can't Do Math Are So Mad At Nate Silver

[swag]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/10/people-who-cant-do-math-are-so-mad-nate-silver/58460/

by Elspeth Reeve

The New York Times' Nate Silver has created a model to predict the outcome of the presidential election that's watched by just about every pundit, and yet Silver's model refuses to perfectly reflect the conventional wisdom spouted by just about every pundit. The pundits do not like this! Silver's FiveThirtyEight model uses math to show that President Obama has a 74.6 percent chance of beating Mitt Romney, even though Romney has unmeasurable things like "momentum" as well as newspaper endorsements, plus a lead in several national polls. Obama's chances remain high, Silver explains, because he has a significant lead in enough swing states to win the needed 270 electoral college votes. The latest pundit outraged that Silver's model doesn't feel right is MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who ranted Monday morning:

"Nate Silver says this is a 73.6 percent chance that the president's going to win. Nobody in that campaign thinks they have a 73.6 percent -- they think they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning.

.... Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue [that] they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next ten days, because they're jokes."

Scarborough is very committed to defending what feels true to him, even when it's not true. In June, he railed that The New York Times kept writing stories making fun of Romney for being rich, but it never made fun of John Kerry and his ice chalet in 2004. When confronted with the fact that he was completely wrong -- The Times covered that ice chalet plenty, it turns out -- Scarborough stuck with his analysis, saying "the general impressions of people like myself … does count in the perspective that active news consumers have."

. . .

Perhaps the most telling critique of Silver's model comes from the people most deeply invested in it being wrong. Romney aides "laugh and roll their eyes when reporters tease them with mentions of the model," BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins reports. One adviser, though, offers an analysis more closely tied to real data, saying, in Coppins' paraphrase, "FiveThirtyEight could well give them a better chance of victory as the swing state polls tighten in the final days of the race." In other words, if the state polls change, so will Silver's model. Which is pretty much what Silver himself would say.

[SingleSeatBiggerMeat]

1. Joe Scarborough

University of Alabama;
University of Florida.

Throw him a calculator and he might think it is a door stop.

He isn't a candidate for Mensa.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

2. They have sooooo much money that they can't see through it.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. Not people who can't do math, Republicans who don't like the math.

nt

[DHelix]

4. Why do we let MSNBC keep Joe?

Seriously... I don't watch this show ever but would Fox News put Paul Begalia on their morning program? I thought MSNBC was supposed to be for us to counter Fox, not be just another back and forth with pundits from both sides. It seems like Joe's actually better at spewing conservatism than most so why does MSnBC make him so high profile?

This guy should be working somehwere else.

[Squinch]

5. I totally agree. He's a blowhard, and rude and I'm really tired of hearing about Joe's gut feelings

[caraher]

7. We?

Maybe because "we" don't run MSNBC. It's a part of the corporate media that has found a niche market among liberals in its evening programming. It's not even remotely a balance to the 24/7 FOX propaganda machine and was never intended to be that. The notion that it is the "liberal FOX" is a narrative of false media balance on par with the creation myth of FOX that US media have, on balance, a liberal bias.

[Odin2005]

14. Because MSNBC is just another Corporate McPravda outlet.

It's reputation as "liberal" is just marketing.

[Rob H.]

6. "Romney aides "laugh and roll their eyes...."

Here's hoping they're crying and wiping their eyes come November 7th.

[flying-skeleton]

8. History of Nate Silver - Please educate me

excuse me but can anyone PLEASE tell me the history of Nate Silver.

How long as he been around?
Has he predicted any elections before? Any success?
What makes Nate Silver SO right and CNN-ABC-NBC-CBS's predictions SO wrong?

I need assurance ........... it is scary close ......... please help ............ we cannot have a liar in chief Romney as President.

Thanks

[Jim Lane]

10. Yes, Silver has a good record.

From his Wikipedia bio:

The accuracy of his November 2008 presidential election predictions—he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states—won Silver further attention and commendation. The only state he missed was Indiana, which went for Barack Obama by 1%. He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races that year.

In the 2010 midterms, he correctly predicted huge Republican gains in the House, though slightly underestimating the gain. He got 34 of the 37 Senate races right. His Senate misses represented overestimates of Republican strength, in that he picked Republican challengers to oust Democratic incumbents in Colorado and Nevada, and picked the Republican Party nominee to win Alaska over a Republican incumbent running as a write-in candidate. See here for details.

Silver's model doesn't say that the CNN-ABC-NBC-CBS's predictions are "SO wrong". When Silver says 73%, he doesn't mean that Obama will get 73% of the popular vote. He means that, if the election were held today, there would be a 73% chance of an Obama victory in the Electoral College. That's not inconsistent with a nationwide poll showing the popular vote to be much closer, or even one showing Romney in the lead. My impression is that most of the sites that take the trouble to do state-by-state analysis (which is more work but also more accurate) have been picking Obama to get to 270 regardless of Romney's improved standing in the nationwide polls.

[flamingdem]

9. NYT has temporarily lifted their pay firewall

Though for whatever reason I can always access 537

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Here's a typical informed post and a comment:

An excerpt:

Silver cannot be wrong because his model, whatever it is, merely puts a likelihood of success on the election. Silver’s model could predict a 75% chance of an Obama win, but if Romney wins the model was not wrong because his model allowed for a 25% chance of a Romney win.

If Silver cannot be wrong, how can he be right? Heads he wins, tails you lose. Calling all philosophy majors!

The guy makes a classic false dichotomy fallacy. He falls into the right winger trap of thinking that everything is either one way or the other and that there are no shades of gray. He misses the point of betting; that if the odds are 25% for a win (from his perspective) they are 1:3 against and he should be able to get $75 if he bets $25 and wins (not accounting for bookmaker profit).


And a typical comment on his post indicative of the depth of thinking of his cohort:

Silver is a fag. Hence his erotic love for obama.

5 posted on Tuesday, October 30, 2012 08:09:02 AM by ConservativeDude

[Demsrule86]

12. GOP types are bad bad at math.

GOP types don't understand probability obviously.

[Odin2005]

13. I've read that the pundits "predictions" are no better than chance.

They are professional BSers paid to look smart, that is why they hate people like Nate.

[vinny9698]

15. The GOP is the anti science party

They dispute any facts that do not support their policies. Facts are just opinions to them