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> Trump winning the presidency when the best models we had gave him a 30% chance is not a failing of prediction at all. How accurate the "best models" were isn

> Trump winning the presidency when the best models we had gave him a 30% chance is not a failing of prediction at all. How accurate the "best models" were isn't really relevant to the accuracy of the predictions of experts as a whole. The media was running that Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the morning of the race.

azinman2 9y ago
Sounds like the model was correct. We just fell into the 2%.
- 21 9y ago
  Today: My model says that I have a probability of 98% of making money by buying this stock tomorrow. Tomorrow: I lost money. I guess I just fell into the 2%.
tom_mellior 9y ago
That may be true, but "trusting the media" is a different issue from "trusting the experts".
bbctol 9y ago
"Experts" and "the media" are not the same set.
pedrocr 9y ago
>How accurate the "best models" were isn't really relevant to the accuracy of the predictions of experts as a whole. Only if you include random talking heads as experts. Then you get that 98% chance of Clinton winning result. But you can select actual experts to rely on before the outcome happens. The 538 forecast was extremely accurate the previous election and had the 30% outcome the day before. That's actually comparable to a poll of economists on bitcoin. And to make it even more useful the polling of economists should ask them to give a probability instead of yes/no. It may be true that 96% say "yes it's in a bubble" and the average probability between them of Bitcoin going to 1M$ is actually 20% or more.
ceejayoz 9y ago
> The media was running that Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the morning of the race. Trump winning doesn't disprove that. The models could be correct and we wound up in the 2%. The chances of me winning the Powerball are one in a hundred million, but me winning doesn't disprove those odds at all.
acdha 9y ago
You might want to check the sources for that claim. It’s often repeated but the reputable polls weren’t anywhere near that lopsided. Nate Silver wrote at length about this but the gist is that the polls were pretty accurate but some people talked about them imprecisely: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/
PaulRobinson 9y ago
The media were not running on data. The data gave her 70%. We're in the 30% of universes where Trump won. In this scenario, you might argue, these are just talking heads. But they are not being asked for a view in order to look popular on TV, they're looking at data and interpreting it in a way that they are happy to be professionally accountable for. Wisdom of crowds in the context of talking heads shooting the odds on a media out is not going to be as accurate as wisdom of crowds for economists being asked about economic issues. So, you know, be careful where you're drawing lines here.

azinman2 9y ago

Sounds like the model was correct. We just fell into the 2%.

21 9y ago
Today: My model says that I have a probability of 98% of making money by buying this stock tomorrow. Tomorrow: I lost money. I guess I just fell into the 2%.

tom_mellior 9y ago

That may be true, but "trusting the media" is a different issue from "trusting the experts".

bbctol 9y ago

"Experts" and "the media" are not the same set.

pedrocr 9y ago

>How accurate the "best models" were isn't really relevant to the accuracy of the predictions of experts as a whole. Only if you include random talking heads as experts. Then you get that 98% chance of Clinton winning result. But you can select actual experts to rely on before the outcome happens. The 538 forecast was extremely accurate the previous election and had the 30% outcome the day before. That's actually comparable to a poll of economists on bitcoin. And to make it even more useful the polling of economists should ask them to give a probability instead of yes/no. It may be true that 96% say "yes it's in a bubble" and the average probability between them of Bitcoin going to 1M$ is actually 20% or more.

ceejayoz 9y ago

> The media was running that Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the morning of the race. Trump winning doesn't disprove that. The models could be correct and we wound up in the 2%. The chances of me winning the Powerball are one in a hundred million, but me winning doesn't disprove those odds at all.

acdha 9y ago

You might want to check the sources for that claim. It’s often repeated but the reputable polls weren’t anywhere near that lopsided. Nate Silver wrote at length about this but the gist is that the polls were pretty accurate but some people talked about them imprecisely: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/

PaulRobinson 9y ago

The media were not running on data. The data gave her 70%. We're in the 30% of universes where Trump won. In this scenario, you might argue, these are just talking heads. But they are not being asked for a view in order to look popular on TV, they're looking at data and interpreting it in a way that they are happy to be professionally accountable for. Wisdom of crowds in the context of talking heads shooting the odds on a media out is not going to be as accurate as wisdom of crowds for economists being asked about economic issues. So, you know, be careful where you're drawing lines here.