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No, that poster was claiming that his coverage was "well-deserved" and I disagreed. He was not obligated to mention his failures, but I did, and that apparently

by spec 16y ago

No, that poster was claiming that his coverage was "well-deserved" and I disagreed. He was not obligated to mention his failures, but I did, and that apparently troubles you greatly for some reason. Silver's whole reputation is based on his assumed accuracy and that's why it is important to provide a more complete record of his predictions (not that my post claims to do that or that I would care enough to do that; since you are so impressed by him, you're welcome to try). Krugman's reputation as a partisan hack that opines on matter he is ignorant about is among other economists with no fewer accomplishments (but his reputation as a pompous ass is among everyone else).

msg 16y ago
Eerie success is impressive. Routine failure is not anti-impressive. People treat Google the same way every time some Labs experiment like Wave fails. They think it means Google's lost their Edge and spinning their wheels. It's equal-and-opposite pessimism to go with the optimism. This is why I do not treat your counterexamples to Silver's accuracy as a convincing slate of proofs. I don't have enough context to judge those failures against the background of his success or vice versa. I do find Nate Silver interesting not just for his psychic abilities. He also brings a certain love of statistics and visualization that deserves the level of coverage he gets. Is he doing any better predicting than some quant or world-class stat guy? No, and you can probably find someone who has a better combination of predictions and historical accidents. But he's also bringing the science to the populace, and that is worth praising and talking about. I do find this 2005 (!) opinion piece by Krugman calling the housing bubble to be an interesting datapoint. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html But between the Silver stuff and the Krugman stuff I do feel like I have enough context to judge that you have your own axe to grind.

by spec 16y ago

msg 16y ago

Eerie success is impressive. Routine failure is not anti-impressive. People treat Google the same way every time some Labs experiment like Wave fails. They think it means Google's lost their Edge and spinning their wheels. It's equal-and-opposite pessimism to go with the optimism. This is why I do not treat your counterexamples to Silver's accuracy as a convincing slate of proofs. I don't have enough context to judge those failures against the background of his success or vice versa. I do find Nate Silver interesting not just for his psychic abilities. He also brings a certain love of statistics and visualization that deserves the level of coverage he gets. Is he doing any better predicting than some quant or world-class stat guy? No, and you can probably find someone who has a better combination of predictions and historical accidents. But he's also bringing the science to the populace, and that is worth praising and talking about. I do find this 2005 (!) opinion piece by Krugman calling the housing bubble to be an interesting datapoint. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html But between the Silver stuff and the Krugman stuff I do feel like I have enough context to judge that you have your own axe to grind.