5 ms·

The Poll Aggregators of the Future Are Reproducible and Open Source

57 points by espeed 10y ago

cyborgx7 10y ago
>There’s lots of concern about media bias from all directions, and open source is the best way to address skepticism about particular assessments. This is a really good and important point, I think. Let's argue about method, not outcome.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
veryhungryhobo 10y ago
slate..............Really..............slate.........
imjustsaying 10y ago
If that's true, then the polling companies of the future have new customers.
teleclimber 10y ago
Totally misleading title. "Polls" is one thing, poll aggregators are a whole other thing. I was really excited to read about actual polls that are somehow open source (not sure how that would work though).
- cruise02 10y ago
  Open source would not be nearly as impressive as reproducible.
  - teleclimber 10y ago
    Yes, although is reproducibility even possible in polls? People's opinions change on a whim. In fact people's opinions can change simply because they were asked a question so the answer might be different if asked the question again, I guess you could conduct the same poll with multiple sets of people and see how the results compare, but in a way that's what poll aggregators do.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Isn't the reasonable definition of reproducible for a poll having overlapping margins of error? A useful poll should do that. The result is qualified, comparisons of results shouldn't ignore that.
- jbondeson 10y ago
  The hardest part of an open source poll would be anonymization. Demographic information in some areas could be enough to come pretty close to uniquely identifying an individual. The rest of it: Likely Voter Models, Demographic Weighting, etc would be pretty easy to have open source and reproducible once you've solved the issues.
  - teleclimber 10y ago
    Yes anonymization is the problem I was thinking of.
- sctb 10y ago
  OK, we've added "Aggregators" to the story title to clarify.
nl 10y ago
I had some trouble finding the code[1] and the paper[2]. The Stan code itself is [3] I think this is quite a strong model - if I was looking to work on it I'd like to see it incorporate some economic data (and probably previous election poll trends) as a way of attempting to improve the early-election-cycle forecasts. [1] https://github.com/pkremp/polls https://github.com/pkremp/polls [2] http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-JASA13.pdf http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-JASA1... [3] https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20national%20polls.stan https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20na...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
espeed 10y ago
ptrs: Ben Adida worked on a cryptography-based open-audit voting system called HELIOS in 2008 -- could be used as part of anonymous yet auditable open-source polling / voting system: http://ben.adida.net/research/ http://ben.adida.net/research/

57 points by espeed 10y ago

>There’s lots of concern about media bias from all directions, and open source is the best way to address skepticism about particular assessments. This is a really good and important point, I think. Let's argue about method, not outcome.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

veryhungryhobo 10y ago

slate..............Really..............slate.........

imjustsaying 10y ago

If that's true, then the polling companies of the future have new customers.

teleclimber 10y ago

Totally misleading title. "Polls" is one thing, poll aggregators are a whole other thing. I was really excited to read about actual polls that are somehow open source (not sure how that would work though).

cruise02 10y ago
Open source would not be nearly as impressive as reproducible.
- teleclimber 10y ago
  Yes, although is reproducibility even possible in polls? People's opinions change on a whim. In fact people's opinions can change simply because they were asked a question so the answer might be different if asked the question again, I guess you could conduct the same poll with multiple sets of people and see how the results compare, but in a way that's what poll aggregators do.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Isn't the reasonable definition of reproducible for a poll having overlapping margins of error? A useful poll should do that. The result is qualified, comparisons of results shouldn't ignore that.
jbondeson 10y ago
The hardest part of an open source poll would be anonymization. Demographic information in some areas could be enough to come pretty close to uniquely identifying an individual. The rest of it: Likely Voter Models, Demographic Weighting, etc would be pretty easy to have open source and reproducible once you've solved the issues.
- teleclimber 10y ago
  Yes anonymization is the problem I was thinking of.
sctb 10y ago
OK, we've added "Aggregators" to the story title to clarify.

nl 10y ago

I had some trouble finding the code[1] and the paper[2]. The Stan code itself is [3] I think this is quite a strong model - if I was looking to work on it I'd like to see it incorporate some economic data (and probably previous election poll trends) as a way of attempting to improve the early-election-cycle forecasts. [1] https://github.com/pkremp/polls https://github.com/pkremp/polls [2] http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-JASA13.pdf http://votamatic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Linzer-JASA1... [3] https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20national%20polls.stan https://github.com/pkremp/polls/blob/master/state%20and%20na...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

espeed 10y ago

ptrs: Ben Adida worked on a cryptography-based open-audit voting system called HELIOS in 2008 -- could be used as part of anonymous yet auditable open-source polling / voting system: http://ben.adida.net/research/ http://ben.adida.net/research/