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This election proved that virtually the entirety of the election prediction space has no idea what the hell it's doing. We live in a world of big data with vas
by rl3 10y ago
This election proved that virtually the entirety of the election prediction space has no idea what the hell it's doing.
We live in a world of big data with vast computational resources, and this outcome is somehow an upset—a totally unexpected surprise.
- Strilanc 10y ago538 gave more than 25% chance to Trump winning. That's losing two coin flips, not "totally unexpected".
- rl3 10y agoThe degree by which Trump won is the "totally unexpected" part.
- OscarCunningham 10y agoOnly just? He even lost the popular vote.
- tim333 10y agoAnd in fairness to Nate, he was saying the polls were about 42 Trump 45 Clinton with ~13% undecided and those undecideds could send the election either way. With hindsight I'd say quite a few undecideds were Trump supporters who were afraid to admit it which I can understand. Just look at the reaction to Theil backing Trump with various calls for him to be fired. I can see why people kept quiet about it.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoEven modern computing is still vulnerable to the old GIGO phenomenon: Garbage In, Garbage Out. The way data was collected has some very serious flaws.
- rawnlq 10y agoI wonder if facebook and google could've built a better model. Prediction based on polling doesn't seem as reliable compared to what people post to their newsfeed or search for.
- ant6n 10y agoA major problem is that the electoral system is chaotic. In the sense of chaos theory: small deviations in input (votes) lead to large differences in the result (electoral college votes). The pollsters were off only be like 2-3% or so, and a bit the distribution. Also, it appears Trump Supporters were often too ashamed to be honest to pollsters.