
What the Fox Knows - libovness
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-fox-knows/
======
swanson
Seems like a great blog rollout strategy in general - every section already
has several posts (not sure if they are manually backdated or what) - you
could easily spend your whole afternoon on the site, which seems great for
"launch day" and way more effective than "The blog is launched! Tune in next
week when our actual content starts rolling in".

Just a quick glance seems to indicate this will become a staple in my RSS list
and a great complement to my current favorite non-tech blog (Grantland).

~~~
the_watcher
Hopefully it has a more reliable RSS feed than Grantland, which I've basically
stopped getting updates from (I switched to monitoring Twitter for it).

~~~
jljljl
Do they even have a feed? I've been trying to find it on their site, and if
they have one it must be pretty well hidden...

~~~
swanson
[http://feeds.feedburner.com/Grantland](http://feeds.feedburner.com/Grantland)

~~~
markel
It's on WordPress.com now, so just find what you want to RSS ingest and add
feed/ to the end of it. Case in point; if you want all of Down Goes Brown:

[http://grantland.com/contributors/sean-
mcindoe/feed/](http://grantland.com/contributors/sean-mcindoe/feed/)

It might not work for everything, but it should work for a lot of things.

------
mathattack
It takes a long time to get to the great ending.

 _We are going to screw some things up. We hope our mistakes will be honest
ones. We hope you’ll gain insight and pleasure from our approach to the news
and that you’ll visit us from time to time. We hope to demonstrate the value
of data journalism as a practical and sustainable proposition.

It’s time for us to start making the news a little nerdier._

------
bmelton
For anybody else in this field, I would caution you against accepting this
knowledge as canon:

> And news accounts routinely estimate the number of attendees at political
> rallies.

In my experience, news organizations _routinely_ over-estimate the attendance
of events to which the reporter sympathizes, and dramatically under-estimates
the attendance of events to which the reporter does not.

As someone who attends a lot of rallies encompassing both 'left' and
'right'-leaning movements, I can say that I've witnessed this first hand. I
attended an event in Annapolis to oppose some gun control measures last
October. The attendance, by my count, was nearly 4,000. I can prove by the
testimonial registry that we had over 1400 people not only in attendance, but
that provided testimony before the legislature. At the same event, those in
favor of the rally were protesting as well. They had, by my count, a few dozen
supporters in attendance. Their testimonial registry was exactly 22.

The Baltimore Sun and Washington Times reported attendance for both camps at
'about equal', which a 'few hundred in attendance for either side'.

When protesting in support of the fourth amendment, or in support of free
speech rights for the media, those numbers were conversely inflated.

~~~
Steko
These claims don't pass a 3 min google test. Baltimore Sun:

 _The governor 's testimony before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee
came after at least 1,500 gun-rights advocates rallied outside the State House
in opposition to the legislation...

Meanwhile, advocates on either side of the issue packed the hearing room and
an overflow room downstairs. Hundreds more stood in a line that extended down
a stairway to the floor below.

Legislative aides said they had never seen such an outpouring of people
seeking to testify on a bill. By an overwhelming number, they were signing up
in opposition to the governor's proposal._

[http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-02-06/news/bs-md-
omall...](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-02-06/news/bs-md-omalley-
guns-20130204_1_assault-weapons-gun-control-gun-buyers)

~~~
bmelton
This[1] was the most egregious article I can find with my own 3 minutes of
Googling, though I admit that it can be read in a way that presents the
information without bias, though I think some of the ambiguity is intended to
mislead.

"Hundreds testify for, against proposals on assault weapons, licensing" is a
sort of true statement, except that exactly 22 is not hundreds.

I remember more biased reports from the time, but I can't find them now. So
while there's some validity to your point, I've seen it happen enough to say
confidently that those estimates are best-guess estimates, and those estimates
are subject to bias.

[1] [http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/6/gun-rights-
ad...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/6/gun-rights-advocates-
swarm-annapolis-fight-omalley/?page=all)

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foobarqux
If the NCAA bracket model is an indication, Nate Silver does not intend to
disclose the _actual_ model used to make his predictions, just like his
election models. He tells you what elements he's mixing but not how.

I expect he will also continue to fail to quantify the performance of his
models against other benchmarks. In the case of the NCAA how much value does
his more complex model add compared to each of the rankings he uses as inputs
alone?

~~~
tgb
He does state he's going to be releasing code on GitHub. We'll see how much
that is.

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danso
> _Our logo depicts a fox (we call him Fox No. 92) as an allusion to a phrase
> originally attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many
> things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” We take a pluralistic
> approach and we hope to contribute to your understanding of the news in a
> variety of ways._

As commenters pointed out in an earlier New York Mag article
([http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/nate-silver-
int...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/nate-silver-interview-
fivethirtyeight-espn.html)) and that Silver alludes to via hyperlink, the
"hedgehog vs. the fox" quote could be interpreted as coming out in _favor_ of
the hedgehog:

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Archilochus](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Archilochus)

> _The fox knows many tricks; and the hedgehog only one; but that is the best
> one of all._

I think if 538 had picked a hedgehog as its mascot, it would still make sense:
it's the pundits/prognosticators who have "many tricks", whereas Silver is
proposing just one _good_ trick -- empirical data analysis -- which happens to
be effective and valuable in all contexts.

~~~
davidkatz
Nate Silver discusses the Fox/Hedgehog division in his excellent "The Signal
and the Noise" frequently, and he largely takes on the meaning proposed by
Phillip Tetlock in his book on expert political judgement.

The idea that Tetlock puts forward is that pundits divide into two categories,
Foxes and Hedgehogs. Hedgehogs explain the world and make predictions
according to one large all encompassing principle. Foxes don't, and apply
different principles to different circumstances. Tetlock concludes, and Silver
endorses this, that Foxes are better at understanding the world than
Hedgehogs.

An example might be the (proposed) principle that free markets lead to
increased prosperity. A hedgehogy capitalist might state the above as a
broadly applicable principle. A foxy capitalist might opt for something like:
"yes, many times increased freedom makes us prosper, but sometimes it doesn't,
it depends, let's talk about the specifics".

I take this to be an argument about complexity. The fox side of the argument
is roughly that the world is more complex than most people allow for, and one
principle or world view will usually not cover an area of knowledge well.

~~~
zwdr
>I take this to be an argument about complexity. The fox side of the argument
is roughly that the world is more complex than most people allow for, and one
principle or world view will usually not cover an area of knowledge well.

I don't think there is a clear division between those two. Both, the fox and
the hedgehog use only one view– their own to seperate signal from noise. The
fox side is just more open to integrating conflicting point of views into
their worldview.

What I mean to say is that in the end both use only one trick, one skill-
filtering information. This of course doesn't mean that the metaphor is wrong,
just that it's wrong to think that the fox doesn't filter information the same
way the hedgehog does.

BTW, this reminds me of something from Laozi "Through what do I know the
nature of all things? Precisely through them." While the things are many, the
principle of understanding them through themself remains singular.

~~~
benched
I really find this type of verbal meta- rearranging to be incredibly
unhelpful. It reminds me strongly of arguments that atheism is a religion, or
that abstaining from a choice is a choice. It's a kind of word-lawyering that
never improves my understanding, only muddying the meaning in the previous
formulation. Perhaps it's just me.

~~~
zwdr
Considering the (lack of) alternatives I fear that using language to argue
about meaning in language is the best I can do :S.

But seriously, I think talking about what _exactly_ something is meant to
represent isn't "lawyering", it's essential for a serious discussion. I got
another quote, too: "The boundaries of our language are the boundaries of our
thoughts".

Telepathy would propably be better though, I agree.

~~~
benched
Let's reduce the fox's many points of knowledge down to a single principle, to
make him more symmetrical with the hedgehog. Ok, why?

~~~
gknoy
Chunky bacon, of course.

------
sethbannon
Google cache version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-
the-fox-knows/)

------
uptown
Is this site working for anybody? It's been down all morning for me despite
others seemingly able to access it.

~~~
dabernathy89
I wonder if this is some kind of DNS issue. My coworkers seem to be having no
problem with it - but Chrome can't find it on Starbucks wifi.

~~~
sp332
The DNS is a bit... scattered.
[https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/fivethirtyeight.com](https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/fivethirtyeight.com)

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abruzzi
His bookcase is organized by color? I'd never be able to find a single book in
my library if I did that.

~~~
LandoCalrissian
I organize mine by size, so I have my own version of crazy.

~~~
chris_mahan
Spine size or cover font size?

~~~
spc476
It could be height (I used to do that as a kid).

~~~
loumf
My bookshelf has adjustable heights and putting all the tall books together
means I make the best use of space.

~~~
chris_mahan
Come to think of it I do that too. Ikea Ivar shelves!

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ryanSrich
I've been out of town recently so I've stayed in a few hotels with cable. I
don't have cable in my apartment back in DC.

Something I noticed last night while watching ESPN is that they must have
mentioned FTE a dozen or so times within an hour. Are they backing FTE? I even
saw an interview on ESPN with one of the cofounders.

~~~
pseut
Yes, ESPN's the corporate parent of 538

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/business/media/nate-
silver...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/business/media/nate-silver-
blogger-for-new-york-times-is-to-join-espn-staff.html?_r=0)

------
nickfox
I KNOW what the fox knows.

