3 ms·
What does it mean to predict the probability of an event that can only possibly be tested once? Isn’t the prediction unfalsifiable?
by dap 6y ago
What does it mean to predict the probability of an event that can only possibly be tested once? Isn’t the prediction unfalsifiable?
- panarky 6y agoSure, if the forecaster and the model were only used one time. But in 538's case they use the similar methods to forecast many individual contests like presidential primaries, presidential elections, senate elections, house elections, governor elections, club soccer, college football, March Madness men and women, MLB-NBA-NFL games and playoffs, etc. Multiple-year track records over many events so you can compare their forecasts to actual results over time. Get the data and compute your own error rate here: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/checking-our-work-data https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/checking-our-work-data
- dap 6y agoAll of those things are very different though. It’s possible you could be excellent at predicting Senate races and terrible at the electoral college, right? And you only get one data point every 4 years.
- dllthomas 6y agoThere's a philosophical side to your question that I am not going to engage with, but for the practical you might be interested in this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoring_rule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoring_rule