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You totally ignored the point. Overfitting to previous results doesn’t account for the fact that the facts on the ground are changing. I mean this year alone we

You totally ignored the point. Overfitting to previous results doesn’t account for the fact that the facts on the ground are changing. I mean this year alone we have a once in a century pandemic, can you fit that to any other election?

awb 6y ago
That's why you test predictions. Silver says 10% is enough uncertainty, Taleb says it's not. From the article: "Premise 1: If you give a probability, you must be willing to wager on it". Unless they're willing to publish and make a friendly bet on their predictions, it's just bloviating. Every day/year/election is unique, but only to a certain magnitude. Some elections have had active wars, some health crises, some criminal scandals, some terrorist attacks, etc. In the end, the polls attempt to account for those uncertainties and historically that's been a much better predictor than a coin flip. For example, Washington DC has never voted Republican since it won electoral votes in 1962. Polls have Biden winning 80-90% of the vote there. Even Taleb would agree there's a near 100% chance of Biden winning there, pandemic or not. Silver's methodology is just extrapolating that out to each state. When it gets to some tipping point states it's closer to 60/40 Biden or 70/30. If Taleb wants to create his own forecast, it would be interesting to track it's performance over time. I have a hard time believing that model closer to a coin-flip is going to outperform weighted polling data and historical precedent over multiple predictions.
- nwienert 6y ago
  Seems like the polls were systematically dramatically off, again.
  - awb 6y ago
    Right, but the original point was that Biden's lead was likely large enough in enough swing states to overcome a 2016-style polling bias, which looks like has occurred in some states. That's why it was a 10% chance for Trump, because he had to not just have a large polling error go his way, but also in enough swing states to total 270. A landslide Biden victory was as probable as a narrow Biden victory. And both were more likely than a narrow Trump victory.
    - nwienert 6y ago
      But that’s simply not true. Because Florida and Texas alone were so far off, 10% odds was definitely “way” wrong. Nate’s model predicted that if Florida went Trump the odds were at 33% or so. Texas moreso, etc. Since Florida went incredibly strongly Trump, we can say with certainty he was completely wrong on the 10% chance. That’s the point: he was way overconfident his past model would fit, it should have been closer to a slightly advantage, which would read something like 60/40 at best.
      - awb 6y ago
        > Since Florida went incredibly strongly Trump, we can say with certainty he was completely wrong on the 10% chance. The model generated 40k scenarios, and the scenario you're describing is one of them. The most extreme scenarios have Trump winning all swing states by a few %, which doesn't look likely. So what's playing out is not wildly outside the predictions by any means. In other words, if a 10% chance happens, it doesn't mean the 10% prediction was wrong. The only way to prove a prediction was wrong is to bet against it over time with your own predictions. As Silver has shown there's a huge appetite for election / sports predictions. Anyone able to beat him over time would have enormous income potential. For example, if you thought Trump had at least a 40% chance to win, you'd have a great betting opportunity in the market that had Trump in the 25-33% range. You could have bought in then and sold when Trump's chance peaked at about 50-60%. If you arbitrage those mistakes you've identified in the market, overtime you could become very wealthy. Until then, it's just pundits pontificating after the results are known without putting any money or reputation on the line beforehand, similar to a casual sports fan late in the 4th quarter: "of course the 49ers were going to blow their lead -- I just knew it!"
        nwienert 6y ago
        His probability of Florida being won by that much was basically 0. But it was actually almost the opposite, in the real world the probability of Biden winning was almost 0. The polls were so far off systematically in one direction - it doesn’t mean he was right about the 10% chance, because that would mean there was equally likely a chance they were all off in the other direction, which is obviously just wrong. Polling missed huge groups of voters opinions - it was just wrong. We have numbers now that show that Trump voters also aren’t forthcoming on their vote. Probably on purpose as an effect of last election and being spiteful towards pollsters in general. I actually had this as a strong prior, so my model predicted this would be close, but of course if you “just go by the polls” you’re essentially trusting a flawed system that is gameable. Anyone who trusts the polls is essentially a fool next time, they have been shown to be incorrect now twice in large amounts and I wouldn’t doubt that the “meme” the right has started to purposely deceive them continues even after Trump. You are absolutely wrong on your 49ers analogy and the 10% covering this. Florida disproves it, as do the systemic nature of being off. If they weren’t off systematically, you’d have expected the polls to get Florida wrong one direction but other states wrong in a different direction. That would prove the model, but if every single state was multiple points off all in the same direction, you don’t get to call margin of error. Your bell curve was shifted one direction, it wasn’t a case of the curve being right but the dice rolled in the tail.

awb 6y ago

That's why you test predictions. Silver says 10% is enough uncertainty, Taleb says it's not. From the article: "Premise 1: If you give a probability, you must be willing to wager on it". Unless they're willing to publish and make a friendly bet on their predictions, it's just bloviating. Every day/year/election is unique, but only to a certain magnitude. Some elections have had active wars, some health crises, some criminal scandals, some terrorist attacks, etc. In the end, the polls attempt to account for those uncertainties and historically that's been a much better predictor than a coin flip. For example, Washington DC has never voted Republican since it won electoral votes in 1962. Polls have Biden winning 80-90% of the vote there. Even Taleb would agree there's a near 100% chance of Biden winning there, pandemic or not. Silver's methodology is just extrapolating that out to each state. When it gets to some tipping point states it's closer to 60/40 Biden or 70/30. If Taleb wants to create his own forecast, it would be interesting to track it's performance over time. I have a hard time believing that model closer to a coin-flip is going to outperform weighted polling data and historical precedent over multiple predictions.

nwienert 6y ago
Seems like the polls were systematically dramatically off, again.
- awb 6y ago
  Right, but the original point was that Biden's lead was likely large enough in enough swing states to overcome a 2016-style polling bias, which looks like has occurred in some states. That's why it was a 10% chance for Trump, because he had to not just have a large polling error go his way, but also in enough swing states to total 270. A landslide Biden victory was as probable as a narrow Biden victory. And both were more likely than a narrow Trump victory.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    But that’s simply not true. Because Florida and Texas alone were so far off, 10% odds was definitely “way” wrong. Nate’s model predicted that if Florida went Trump the odds were at 33% or so. Texas moreso, etc. Since Florida went incredibly strongly Trump, we can say with certainty he was completely wrong on the 10% chance. That’s the point: he was way overconfident his past model would fit, it should have been closer to a slightly advantage, which would read something like 60/40 at best.
    - awb 6y ago
      > Since Florida went incredibly strongly Trump, we can say with certainty he was completely wrong on the 10% chance. The model generated 40k scenarios, and the scenario you're describing is one of them. The most extreme scenarios have Trump winning all swing states by a few %, which doesn't look likely. So what's playing out is not wildly outside the predictions by any means. In other words, if a 10% chance happens, it doesn't mean the 10% prediction was wrong. The only way to prove a prediction was wrong is to bet against it over time with your own predictions. As Silver has shown there's a huge appetite for election / sports predictions. Anyone able to beat him over time would have enormous income potential. For example, if you thought Trump had at least a 40% chance to win, you'd have a great betting opportunity in the market that had Trump in the 25-33% range. You could have bought in then and sold when Trump's chance peaked at about 50-60%. If you arbitrage those mistakes you've identified in the market, overtime you could become very wealthy. Until then, it's just pundits pontificating after the results are known without putting any money or reputation on the line beforehand, similar to a casual sports fan late in the 4th quarter: "of course the 49ers were going to blow their lead -- I just knew it!"
      - nwienert 6y ago
        His probability of Florida being won by that much was basically 0. But it was actually almost the opposite, in the real world the probability of Biden winning was almost 0. The polls were so far off systematically in one direction - it doesn’t mean he was right about the 10% chance, because that would mean there was equally likely a chance they were all off in the other direction, which is obviously just wrong. Polling missed huge groups of voters opinions - it was just wrong. We have numbers now that show that Trump voters also aren’t forthcoming on their vote. Probably on purpose as an effect of last election and being spiteful towards pollsters in general. I actually had this as a strong prior, so my model predicted this would be close, but of course if you “just go by the polls” you’re essentially trusting a flawed system that is gameable. Anyone who trusts the polls is essentially a fool next time, they have been shown to be incorrect now twice in large amounts and I wouldn’t doubt that the “meme” the right has started to purposely deceive them continues even after Trump. You are absolutely wrong on your 49ers analogy and the 10% covering this. Florida disproves it, as do the systemic nature of being off. If they weren’t off systematically, you’d have expected the polls to get Florida wrong one direction but other states wrong in a different direction. That would prove the model, but if every single state was multiple points off all in the same direction, you don’t get to call margin of error. Your bell curve was shifted one direction, it wasn’t a case of the curve being right but the dice rolled in the tail.