
Nate Silver has made a career out of predicting things - barredo
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/books/2012/10/nate_silver_s_book_the_signal_and_the_noise_reviewed_.html#
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andrewljohnson
Republicans say Nate Silver is a biased liberal, and reading his blog this
election cycle makes it seem that way to me even.

But I would like to know - is there a Republican analog to Nate Silver?
Someone who predicts 90% of the races at the end, does the meta-math, and has
a computer model?

If there is no Republican analog, can you possibly say Nate Silver is liberal
or biased? Does using a computer model and math, and blogging about your
results make you a Democrat?

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sxcurry
I don't think he has a leaning one way or the other - he tries to be unbiased,
and arrive at data-driven conclusions. What have you seen from Nate that makes
him seem a "biased liberal" to you? I'd be very interested to know. Also,
we'll see in about a month how good his meta-analysis is.

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tptacek
He leans Democratic and has said so on more than one occasion. He supported
Obama in '08.

One gets the impression that his professional reputation is more important
than his ideological affiliation, and so I find him pretty credible.

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waterlesscloud
He states straight out in his FAQ that he supports Obama.

"What is your political affiliation? My state has non-partisan registration,
so I am not registered as anything. I vote for Democratic candidates the
majority of the time (though by no means always). This year, I have been a
supporter of Barack Obama."

And the next question -

"Are your results biased toward your preferred candidates? I hope not, but
that is for you to decide. I have tried to disclose as much about my
methodology as possible."

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tptacek
That's from 2008, right? FiveThirtyEight.com isn't his site anymore.

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waterlesscloud
Sure, but I'm having a hard time imagining the answer to either question has
changed. If it had, I'm sure he's capable of having that information removed
from a post bearing his name.

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tptacek
Lots of people who supported Obama in 2008 no longer do. Meanwhile, why are
you so sure he'd update a FAQ entry on a site he no longer maintains?

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waterlesscloud
His name is right there on the FAQ. He's a media figure, of at least some
note, who makes his living predicting political outcomes. If he had changed
his stand, he would have the information removed from something bearing his
name. It has direct impact on perception about his work.

He'd have it changed.

~~~
tptacek
Disagree; you can't even get to www.fivethirtyeight.com anymore (it redirects
to NYT) and Silver is pretty transparent; I think if that affiliation was
dependable information, it'd be somewhere in the masthead of his blog.

It's not important either way.

(For what it's worth: I still support Obama).

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tatsuke95
Nate Silver came from the fantastic world of the statistical analysis of
baseball, specifically Baseball Prospectus. You can check out his body of work
here (some articles require a subscription):

<http://www.baseballprospectus.com/author/nate_silver/>

His big contribution was a model used to predict player statistics. When he
first started writing about politics, I assumed the name was a coincidence.

~~~
wilfra
Actually he came from the fantastic World of poker :)

He gravitated to Sabermetrics from there.

~~~
tatsuke95
There you go. Dynamic guy. Almost like he enjoys numbers.

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tptacek
The book is pretty good, sort of like a cross between Moneyball and
Freakonomics. It's less political than you'd think it'd be, and as an attempt
to preach the gospel of Bayesianism, should be congenial to most HN readers.

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SkyMarshal
<3 Nate's blog. Only two election sites I bother with nowadays are Nate's [1]
and Andrew Tannenbaum's [2], both data-oriented.

[1]: <http://fivethirtyeight.com>

[2]: <http://electoral-vote.com>

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sendos
FYI, I use the data from electoral-vote.com to turn it into a probability of
winning the election at <http://prespredict.com>

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Thrymr
I like that your site shows the 2008 history right below the 2012 (although it
is distracting that the scale in time is different between them). I couldn't
even find that comparison when I looked for it on Nate Silver's site.

I'm curious about the methodology as well. Why didn't you choose more standard
gaussian statistics for the differences, instead of the combination
linear/step model? How much difference would it make?

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sendos
In this plot <http://imgur.com/BAEie> you can see the difference between a
gaussian model and the model I use for the translating state poll differences
into probabilities of winning that state.

I prefer to have the flat region of 50% probability when the state poll
difference is small, which the gaussian model doesn't have, to take into
account (a) the various errors in the polling data and (b) the likelihood that
people's minds can change by the time the election comes.

As to how much difference it would make, with the current model, Obama's
probability is now at 81%, whereas with the Gaussian model it would be around
95%.

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andrewcooke
he's good because he's careful, he does the maths right, and he's doing meta-
analysis, so he has more data than the people he's being compared to.

but he's popular mainly because he can communicate so well. doing the maths
right is not that hard.

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tptacek
The math he's using is not hard, but the data sets he's working with are
annoying.

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seunosewa
I'm lost. What are some of his latest predictions that came true?

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wtallis
Why do you only care about his recent predictions? What's unconvincing about
the track record of the rest of his career?

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spindritf
If he has a good method, if he's on a right track, that method should
generally be improving with more work and data so recent predictions should
generally be better than distant ones.

Also, "You're only as good as your last envelope."

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ithcy2
"Predictions are hard—especially about the future."

And here I was under the impression that ALL predictions are about the future.

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textminer
Today's the day you learn about Yogiisms.

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tptacek
Sure it's Yogi? It's also attributed to Samuel Goldwyn and Mark Twain. (I
doubt the Twain association).

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statictype
"All quotes, given enough time, are attributed to Mark Twain" - Mark Twain

Actually, I saw this one assigned to Neil Bohr. Sounds like a Yogi-ism though.

