3 ms·

I am criticizing their labeling of Trump's win as low probability.

by ceilingcorner 6y ago

khuey 6y ago
"He won" is not sufficient evidence upon which to do that.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Nowhere did I say it is. I simply think that, if one were following the right information, his win was not as unexpected as the coastal media presented it as being. Personally I would have put it about 60-40 Hillary-Trump.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    You started off by calling the 2016 prediction a debacle, but now you're saying you would have put the odds about 12 percentage points differently. That doesn't seem like a big enough disagreement to warrant the kind of vehement criticism you're throwing around.
    - ceilingcorner 6y ago
      I called it a debacle because 99.9% of media sources, pundits, politicians, political figures, or anyone else thought that Hillary had anything less than a guaranteed win. I'm simply suggesting it was actually always a close race, but that the media ignored this because it went against their ideological model / they weren't familiar with places like the Rust Belt.
      - wtallis 6y ago
        You really need to be more clear about which of your criticisms are against FiveThirtyEight specifically vs against the media in general. Because now it's looking like you are complaining about the media in general and using that as justification for mistrusting FiveThirtyEight, in the context of a discussion specifically about FiveThirtyEight being a notable outlier from that general media trend.
        ceilingcorner 6y ago
        It's still just unclear to me how FiveThirtyEight assigning Trump a ±30% chance of winning can be considered "accurate" or "good". From my point of view, this is only because said people considered Trump winning so extremely unlikely that 538 getting it sort of right appears exceptional. In reality, they were still quite wrong, just slightly less so. Ergo I don't see much value in their model. I'm seeing the same exact thing today with Biden at a 90% chance of winning.

I am criticizing their labeling of Trump's win as low probability.

khuey 6y ago

"He won" is not sufficient evidence upon which to do that.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Nowhere did I say it is. I simply think that, if one were following the right information, his win was not as unexpected as the coastal media presented it as being. Personally I would have put it about 60-40 Hillary-Trump.
- wtallis 6y ago
  You started off by calling the 2016 prediction a debacle, but now you're saying you would have put the odds about 12 percentage points differently. That doesn't seem like a big enough disagreement to warrant the kind of vehement criticism you're throwing around.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    I called it a debacle because 99.9% of media sources, pundits, politicians, political figures, or anyone else thought that Hillary had anything less than a guaranteed win. I'm simply suggesting it was actually always a close race, but that the media ignored this because it went against their ideological model / they weren't familiar with places like the Rust Belt.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      You really need to be more clear about which of your criticisms are against FiveThirtyEight specifically vs against the media in general. Because now it's looking like you are complaining about the media in general and using that as justification for mistrusting FiveThirtyEight, in the context of a discussion specifically about FiveThirtyEight being a notable outlier from that general media trend.
      - ceilingcorner 6y ago
        It's still just unclear to me how FiveThirtyEight assigning Trump a ±30% chance of winning can be considered "accurate" or "good". From my point of view, this is only because said people considered Trump winning so extremely unlikely that 538 getting it sort of right appears exceptional. In reality, they were still quite wrong, just slightly less so. Ergo I don't see much value in their model. I'm seeing the same exact thing today with Biden at a 90% chance of winning.