5 ms·
Yeah. In 2016 when people were like "hurr durr experts suck, they predicted Hillary would win and she lost", it was exasperating. If a model predicted an outcom
by ss108 4y ago
Yeah. In 2016 when people were like "hurr durr experts suck, they predicted Hillary would win and she lost", it was exasperating. If a model predicted an outcome with 60-70% certainty, and the less likely scenario happens, model wasn't necessarily bad. That'd be true even if it was a 90/10 split.
- nradov 4y agoThe model wasn't bad, just useless.
- ss108 4y agoWhy useless? People have to attempt to predict the outcomes of elections, and have to do their best.
- afiori 4y agoI would guess that the vast majority of the population do not take meaningful actions based on election prediction (other than "I might [not] need to actually vote"). There are good reasons to have polls and predictions but they are far from necessary.
- ss108 4y agoPeople who work for political campaigns need to know, businesses and investors might like to plan, etc.
- afiori 4y agoYes, but it is not "needed" in the current form. It is needed the same way you need to predict how global trends will be in 6 months: very important for a lot of people, but not an actionable information for most.
- hermiod 4y agoJust because something isn't useful to everyone, doesn't mean it isn't useful to someone. The original claim was that election prediction is useless -- are you willing to concede that election prediction isn't useless?
- nradov 4y agoI made no such claim. I merely stated that this particular election prediction was useless.
- pickovven 4y agoWorse than useless. It likely impacts election outcomes.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoHighly disagree that it was "useless": 1. First, when many pundits were basically saying there was no chance that Trump would win, Silver was particularly highlighting not just that it was in the realm of possibility, but would not even be very surprising if Trump won (e.g. I think Nate does a good job with his "same probability of a team down by 3 points at the beginning of the 4th quarter coming back to win" to clarify to a lay person that this isn't unusual). 2. When making political predictions based on polling that turn out to be "wrong" (i.e. end up going the way of the < 50% option), it's helpful to think of why this might happen. In Trump's case, it was pretty obvious he was a very different type of politician than what came before, so it's worth thinking whether that difference might result in widespread error in some polls. Also, whenever a race is very close, it's obvious that any small movements one way or the other can affect the outcome. In 2016 Trump lost the popular vote by a substantial margin but won the electoral collage by a significant but not huge amount. In fact, the "all or nothing" way the US electoral college system works has the effect of amplifying smaller differences into larger vote outcomes.
- bnralt 4y agoTrump winning can happen in a model that gives him a 30% chance and a model that gives him a 5% chance. What was odd was seeing fans of Nate Silver point out the former, but then trying to say that his model was better because it gave Trump a higher probability of winning (or even saying Sam Wang's model was terrible for having Clinton's chance in the high 90's). That could be the case, but it's not necessarily the case, for the exact reasons they just stated.