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It has its positives and negatives. It’s pretty misleading to couch a prediction about a one time event in percentage terms; remember 538’s confidence that Hill
by zwkrt 5y ago
It has its positives and negatives. It’s pretty misleading to couch a prediction about a one time event in percentage terms; remember 538’s confidence that Hillary would win the election in 2016?
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoYou do realize an event with a 79% chance of happening still doesn't happen 1 out of 5 times? That doesn't mean that the 79% prediction is wrong, that's just how statistics work.
- LordDragonfang 5y agoInteresting choice of example, because 538 actually gave the least confidence of any poll analysis/reporting site. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gave-trump-a-better-chance-than-almost-anyone-else/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gav...
- whatshisface 5y agoIf I minted a well-balanced coin and flipped it with a promise to destroy it afterwards, it would not at all be misleading to characterize it as having a 50/50 chance of coming up heads. Even in the frequentist interpretation of probability, the odds before a one-time event have a meaning: they're the fraction of similar events that would resolve in a certain way if it was to be repeated. >remember 538’s confidence that Hillary would win the election in 2016 Yeah, 538 was confident. It wasn't misleading for them to announce a high probability, unless you thought 538's confidence was the same thing as The Probability.