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I hope that the rise of Nate Silver portends a day when journalism will not be practiced almost exclusively by people who are functionally illiterate when it co
by tmoertel 14y ago
I hope that the rise of Nate Silver portends a day when journalism will not be practiced almost exclusively by people who are functionally illiterate when it comes to all things quantitative. When so much of our world is governed by relationships that are inherently quantitative, it's tragic that, of the people who make it their life's work to explain that world to us, so few are equipped to do the job.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoI found out today that the US weather service gives a % chance of rain estimates. That's good but not enough.
- fijal 14y agoWould you rather find a certainity that every now and then turns into a lie? I wouldn't.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago... It's good that one part of the government (Navy?) presents it's predictions with confidence values abd so will introduce the concepts to the nation in an everyday format but just the weather service is not enough (what I would have said had I more time first time)
- llimllib 14y agoAnd then, god forbid, perhaps politicians who are not innumerate? A man can dream.
- Evbn 14y agoPoliticians are highly numerate. They just lie about their incentives so the appear innumerate when misjudged.
- rhizome 14y agoPlaying to the lowest common denominator. Any politician who says they don't read the news or polls is lying.
- jivatmanx 14y agoOnly politicians in the vanishingly small percentage of districts that are actually competitive.
- ryanwaggoner 14y agoMany of those districts are still competitive, just at the primary level instead of the general election.
- jivatmanx 14y agoPrimary elections are only competitive when there isn't an incumbent. And even then rarely, because there is a candidate that the party favors.
- Zigurd 14y agoWhy has Obama been going to Florida? The only reasonable answer is that he is looking not only at the snapshot numbers someone like Nate Silver does a good job of reporting, but the trend, way ahead of current polling. Campaigns are very numerate. For the same reasons, Chris Christie and Michael Blomberg feel safe throwing Romney under the bus.
- scott_s 14y agoRegarding Christie, I'm willing to assume that his praise on Obama is genuine, and not calculated. Christie has had to deal with an enormous disaster, and I can easily see him being grateful if the President has, in fact, been very helpful.
- llimllib 14y agoI should say, politicians who don't act innumerate in session. Good point that they act extremely numerate (is that a word?) in how they respond to polling numbers.
- xxpor 14y agoBloomberg is not a Republican anymore (He's an independent), for the record.
- celer 14y agoPoliticians, by and large, are fairly numerate. Speechwriters rarely care about numbers, and policymakers care not at all.
- pdonis 14y ago> Politicians, by and large, are fairly numerate. Got any data to back this up?
- rhizome 14y agoQuantitative journalism. In light of that term I think we can see that Fox/HuffPo/etc. practices qualitative journalism, which I would translate to "feelings-based."
- tomrod 14y agoDon't forget Engadget to that list, as today's editorial (posted earlier) shows.
- rhizome 14y agoI rarely deign to type the names of any Nick Denton properties.
- neilk 14y agoJulian Assange had a similar term, "scientific journalism". Scientific in the sense that you have to show your raw data. Nate is a hybrid. The details of his model are not on Github or anything, but he does describe his general approach, and he works from publicly available information.
- rayiner 14y agoIt's even beyond that really. Most journalists are just functionally illiterate, period. Journalism is no longer a respectable profession, and it largely now draws from a pool of people who wouldn't be good at much else. As far as I can tell, the journalism majors that have a bit of intellectual horsepower all end up as lawyers.
- neilk 14y agoOh no, you have the problem precisely backwards. Journalism is now a very respectable profession. Which is why it attracts people who don't know anything. It was much better when journalism was a trade that you went into. Street savviness was the journo's hallmark. They had no loyalty to power, because they came from the wrong side of the tracks, and their livelihood depended on exposing secrets. Great journalists were ugly, ink-stained, alcoholic wretches. Those people are gone. Now there's two kinds of professional journalists. Middle class people who were educated to do journalism at university, fighting over the few scraps of remunerative work left. And people who want to shill for one of the dominant political coalitions. These groups get to the gym a lot more often, but are constrained by their loyalty to the system. So, journalism would be better if it was less respectable. We also need to put a stop to all the social mobility that's happening. When you block an entire group of people from attending university or holding office on some irrational basis like ethnic origin, you usually get some really good journalists. But there is cause for hope. Perhaps the end of privacy means we'll get more people in the media like Eliot Spitzer.