4 ms·

"Usually a party picks a nominee who is both reasonably “electable” and who upholds its traditional policy positions. In Trump, the Republican Party may have a

"Usually a party picks a nominee who is both reasonably “electable” and who upholds its traditional policy positions. In Trump, the Republican Party may have a candidate who fails on both counts." this kid throws around a lot of loose garbage language for a statistician. he clearly let his emotions and feelings distract his analysis (and still is). trump is electable -- for sure -- and this presidential race is going to be very very interesting.

eugeneionesco 10y ago
Huge bias against Trump from Silver http://imgur.com/r/The_Donald/LwZ9JwW http://imgur.com/r/The_Donald/LwZ9JwW
- smt88 10y ago
  That's true, and the writers of FiveThirtyEight publish a weekly transcript of a Slack chat in which they discuss those things. Some of the writers were very optimistic about Trump, and Nate was notably not optimistic. It's impossible for journalists to be unbiased or to be right all the time. Good journalists will "show their work" (the data they're basing their analysis on), explain areas where they could be wrong, admit their biases, and (ultimately) admit when they're wrong. Silver has done all these things. Maybe you don't like his site or his writing, but "unbiased" journalism is a fantasy peddled by low-brow entertainment channels like CNN. When people study facts, they form conclusions, and we should want to know both the facts and the conclusions. It's better to know the biases and be able to take the work with a grain of salt.
  - eugeneionesco 10y ago
    >It's impossible for journalists to be unbiased or to be right all the time. Of course, the thing is Silver is 100% wrong in all his predictions regarding Trump. You can't take him seriously when he talks about him.
    - smt88 10y ago
      You can still read his work for entertainment value or to see the data analysis. That's the value of his work -- it's not just blind punditry. I'm also interested in seeing which serious journalists predicted Trump's success and when they predicted it. The problem, which Silver has written about extensively, is that polls are not always very predictive. In some places and for certain types of elections, they have massive margins of error that make them essentially useless. That's why people looking at real facts and data got this election so wrong: the country changed, and looking at the history of the country didn't tell us what the country is like now. It doesn't mean those people were wrong -- it just shows one of the limitations of science, which is a discipline that, by definition, applies data of the past in an effort to predict the future.
    - dinkumthinkum 10y ago
      I think a big problem is that intelligent people tend to be naive about the level of sophistication of voters.
      - eugeneionesco 10y ago
        Those poor and stupid people amirite?
- dinkumthinkum 10y ago
  Anyone that is not biased against Trump is just not thinking.
  - eugeneionesco 10y ago
    You're arrogant and completely wrong.
smt88 10y ago
Odd to call a 38-year-old stats expert with an excellent track record of journalism and prediction a "kid"... Silver certainly has gotten much of this election wrong, which he admitted, but so has everyone else. In the end, he's presenting facts, and the predictions are probabilities rather than Silver saying "I know what will happen". I've followed FiveThirtyEight's coverage of this election closely. Some articles are data-driven, and some are just the thoughts of the statisticians. This is his fault, but many of these FiveThirtyEight articles don't make that much sense in isolation. If you read them as a series, you can see the data that drives assertions like these. Here's support from FiveThirtyEight (and others) that demonstrate Trump's chances of winning as being very low: 1. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-sexism-women-2016-election/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-sexism-wome... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/republicans-have-a-massive-electoral-map-problem-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/re... 3. http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-el...
- lintiness 10y ago
  his excellent "track record" is what, two elections? let's add this one and make it three. how's he doing?
  - scarmig 10y ago
    Four domestic cycles, so far. Which comprise dozens or hundreds of individual elections, depending on how you count. Internationally I believe he's been pretty off the mark, though.
dinkumthinkum 10y ago
This person is as close to an expert on calling elections as there are. Are you shocked that there are important qualitative analyses in elections?

eugeneionesco 10y ago

Huge bias against Trump from Silver http://imgur.com/r/The_Donald/LwZ9JwW http://imgur.com/r/The_Donald/LwZ9JwW

smt88 10y ago
That's true, and the writers of FiveThirtyEight publish a weekly transcript of a Slack chat in which they discuss those things. Some of the writers were very optimistic about Trump, and Nate was notably not optimistic. It's impossible for journalists to be unbiased or to be right all the time. Good journalists will "show their work" (the data they're basing their analysis on), explain areas where they could be wrong, admit their biases, and (ultimately) admit when they're wrong. Silver has done all these things. Maybe you don't like his site or his writing, but "unbiased" journalism is a fantasy peddled by low-brow entertainment channels like CNN. When people study facts, they form conclusions, and we should want to know both the facts and the conclusions. It's better to know the biases and be able to take the work with a grain of salt.
- eugeneionesco 10y ago
  >It's impossible for journalists to be unbiased or to be right all the time. Of course, the thing is Silver is 100% wrong in all his predictions regarding Trump. You can't take him seriously when he talks about him.
  - smt88 10y ago
    You can still read his work for entertainment value or to see the data analysis. That's the value of his work -- it's not just blind punditry. I'm also interested in seeing which serious journalists predicted Trump's success and when they predicted it. The problem, which Silver has written about extensively, is that polls are not always very predictive. In some places and for certain types of elections, they have massive margins of error that make them essentially useless. That's why people looking at real facts and data got this election so wrong: the country changed, and looking at the history of the country didn't tell us what the country is like now. It doesn't mean those people were wrong -- it just shows one of the limitations of science, which is a discipline that, by definition, applies data of the past in an effort to predict the future.
  - dinkumthinkum 10y ago
    I think a big problem is that intelligent people tend to be naive about the level of sophistication of voters.
    - eugeneionesco 10y ago
      Those poor and stupid people amirite?
dinkumthinkum 10y ago
Anyone that is not biased against Trump is just not thinking.
- eugeneionesco 10y ago
  You're arrogant and completely wrong.

smt88 10y ago

Odd to call a 38-year-old stats expert with an excellent track record of journalism and prediction a "kid"... Silver certainly has gotten much of this election wrong, which he admitted, but so has everyone else. In the end, he's presenting facts, and the predictions are probabilities rather than Silver saying "I know what will happen". I've followed FiveThirtyEight's coverage of this election closely. Some articles are data-driven, and some are just the thoughts of the statisticians. This is his fault, but many of these FiveThirtyEight articles don't make that much sense in isolation. If you read them as a series, you can see the data that drives assertions like these. Here's support from FiveThirtyEight (and others) that demonstrate Trump's chances of winning as being very low: 1. http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-sexism-women-2016-election/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-sexism-wome... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/republicans-have-a-massive-electoral-map-problem-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/re... 3. http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-el...

lintiness 10y ago
his excellent "track record" is what, two elections? let's add this one and make it three. how's he doing?
- scarmig 10y ago
  Four domestic cycles, so far. Which comprise dozens or hundreds of individual elections, depending on how you count. Internationally I believe he's been pretty off the mark, though.

dinkumthinkum 10y ago

This person is as close to an expert on calling elections as there are. Are you shocked that there are important qualitative analyses in elections?