3 ms·
"Of course Nate Silver and co. did not have Comey reopening the case as a factor in their models; that is not an indictment of the model itself." Why is that n
by chmod600 5y ago
"Of course Nate Silver and co. did not have Comey reopening the case as a factor in their models; that is not an indictment of the model itself."
Why is that not an indictment of the model? Stuff happens in politics. Things change.
A month out you should ordinarily have much less certainty than a day before. But their predictions were the opposite, where certainty was falling. Sure, there can be reasons for that kind of inversion, but usually it's just arrogance and neglecting the long tail of black swans.
- zimpenfish 5y ago> Stuff happens in politics. Things change. "FBI Director going rogue the week before the election" isn't something you could factor into a prediction because it just hadn't ever happened before. It'd be like trying to factor in "What if an asteroid hits Kansas the week before?"
- chmod600 5y agoBy itself, that's unlikely. But the point of black swans is not that a particular thing will happen, but that there are zillions of low-probability events and they add up to a high probability.