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I agree. I think Silver laid it out clearly in a piece that people called him a troll for writing: Election Update: Yes, Donald Trump Has A Path To Victory, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-yes-don.... Another political writer at 538, Harry Enten, had a similar story a few days later, Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-...

I also listen to their politics podcast, and they constantly talk about how to prevent people from rounding up an 80% chance to a 100% chance. One change they made this cycle was to try say 4 out-of 5 chance (which is mathematically the same) to convey both the lack of precision and to make it more intuitive. I think it helps. Personally, when I talked to people about election outcomes, I phrased it as "Based on what I know, I will be surprised-but-not-shocked if x happens, and shocked if y happens" to differentiate between, say, a 20% chance and a 1% chance.




That's not the whole picture. Before he learned to be more careful, Silver was calling Trump a troll, doomed to fail, who wasn't even trying to win.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-winning...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-the-wor...


Yup, and after that, he issued a complete mea culpa and made it a point to look at the actual data.


Yes, and he admitted to misleading with fake math:

> But it’s not how it worked for those skeptical forecasts about Trump’s chance of becoming the Republican nominee. Despite the lack of a model, we put his chances in percentage terms on a number of occasions.

So it would be more accurate to say that he was careful during the second half of the election, after making significant mistakes (both mathematical and ethical) during the first half.


By "first half" you mean before Iowa, and by "second half" you mean after Iowa.




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