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How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump
fivethirtyeight.com ^ | May 18, 2016 | Nate Silver

Posted on 05/18/2016 6:15:16 AM PDT by TaxPayer2000

Trump’s nomination shows the need for a more rigorous approach.

~~~SNIP ~~~

1. Our early forecasts of Trump’s nomination chances weren’t based on a statistical model, which may have been most of the problem.

2. Trump’s nomination is just one event, and that makes it hard to judge the accuracy of a probabilistic forecast.

3. The historical evidence clearly suggested that Trump was an underdog, but the sample size probably wasn’t large enough to assign him quite so low a probability of winning.

4. Trump’s nomination is potentially a point in favor of “polls-only” as opposed to “fundamentals” models.

5. There’s a danger in hindsight bias, and in overcorrecting after an unexpected event such as Trump’s nomination.

~~SNIP ~~


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: natesilver
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To: TaxPayer2000

The boy genius has feet of clay.


21 posted on 05/18/2016 6:56:02 AM PDT by Unam Sanctam
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To: TaxPayer2000

the fallacy is that data exists with which to construct a meaningful model

there is no such data


22 posted on 05/18/2016 6:56:34 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc;+12, 73, ....Opabinia can teach us a lot)
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To: TomGuy
Expect the media sycophants to pile on.

The media trick is to knowingly report a false fact (read: Democrat talking point} and ask for a reaction, instead of just reporting that the talking point is false.

That way, they get the thought out there, and they get video of the attacked being defensive which becomes the basis of some future media meme.

-PJ

23 posted on 05/18/2016 7:07:07 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: bert
I think meaningful models can be built when there is a trend. The problem is when the trend breaks and a new direction emerges. That's what is happening here. The models can't see the bend in the road.

It's ironic that Obama said he wanted to transform America, but the models are still based on the pre-transformed status quo. What appears to be showing is not the new trends of the post-transformed America, but rather, the resistance to the transformation asserting itself.

-PJ

24 posted on 05/18/2016 7:15:47 AM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Methinks they need to GET THE HELL OUT OF Washington DC!

Too long talking the DC insiders who ALSO don not know what is going on in the real world.


25 posted on 05/18/2016 7:24:04 AM PDT by Robert A Cook PE (I can only donate monthly, but socialists' ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)
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To: MrEdd

“Well, I am one of the ones that they cannot reach by phone. But if they still could I would still mislead them.”

The last political robo poll that called me contacted a 20 something conservative, pro gun, pro life, black female lesbian.


26 posted on 05/18/2016 7:27:37 AM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: TaxPayer2000
He says he acted like a pundit. That must mean that he let his personal prejudices overwhelm his common sense.

What's the rest of the article say? /s

27 posted on 05/18/2016 7:34:55 AM PDT by Stentor ("Hiding behind 'conservative' while America goes down the toilet is not acceptable anymore." LS)
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To: TaxPayer2000

You screwed up, Nate—Big-time.

Like so many in politics, you allowed your biases to get in the way of your objectivity.

Why should we pay any attention to you going forward?


28 posted on 05/18/2016 7:36:11 AM PDT by Arm_Bears (Rope. Tree. Politician/Journalist. Some assembly required.)
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To: billorites
Donald Trump is the Black Swan.

I'll be looking for photos of a copy of Antifragile on a Trump bookcase.

29 posted on 05/18/2016 7:39:43 AM PDT by Stentor ("Hiding behind 'conservative' while America goes down the toilet is not acceptable anymore." LS)
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To: Buckeye McFrog

Why would anyone answer their polls, much less truthfully? You get put into a pigeonhole, you then get bombarded with follow up solicitations by phone and mail. And, in today’s world of spying by the likes of the NSA and Google, why give up any personal information you don’t have to?


30 posted on 05/18/2016 7:43:03 AM PDT by EDINVA
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To: Arm_Bears

“Like so many in politics, you allowed your biases to get in the way of your objectivity.”

You are onto something, but I think he did worse than that. He disregarded objectivity in order to try to shape the outcome the way he wanted it to be. He’s a manipulative liar. Not a scientific pollster.


31 posted on 05/18/2016 7:48:09 AM PDT by Cincinnatus.45-70 (What do DemocRats enjoy more than a truckload of dead babies? Unloading them with a pitchfork!)
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To: TaxPayer2000
If any of this idiot analysts, pollsters, talking heads, media pundits and activists, would have actually had a simple conversation with anyone out in the country, away from the DC bubble, they would have known Trump was going to win, because everyone was pissed at Washington and the politicians.

Listening to the cable news programs, I sometimes find myself wondering how these people function in their daily lives by knowing so little that is true.

32 posted on 05/18/2016 7:50:02 AM PDT by HotHunt
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To: MrEdd

Dunno about that, but if I ever meet up with Bridget from Cardholder Services, she ain’t going to be making any more voice recordings.


33 posted on 05/18/2016 8:11:06 AM PDT by thoughtomator
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To: TaxPayer2000

In other words: “we didn’t know the public was in revolt over illegal immigration”


34 posted on 05/18/2016 8:19:39 AM PDT by The Toll
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To: TaxPayer2000
There’s a danger in hindsight bias, and in overcorrecting after an unexpected event such as Trump’s nomination.

Which means he learned nothing. Hopefully he is wrong about this in the future as he was about the British election.

35 posted on 05/18/2016 8:21:12 AM PDT by KC_Conspirator
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To: Hostage

Could have been written by CW


36 posted on 05/18/2016 8:22:26 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma deuce)
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To: TaxPayer2000

He wrote checks that his *SS couldn’t cash. So long Nate Cuck.


37 posted on 05/18/2016 8:22:51 AM PDT by proust (Texans for Trump!)
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To: TaxPayer2000

From the outset, Trump was drawing huge, enthusiastic crowds. Orders of magnitude greater than what any other candidate was doing, this draw seems to have been overlooked completely by the ‘pundits.’ For them to be so blind in the glare of Trump’s spotlight suggests more than just reading ‘the data.’ It suggests punditry has/had a blind spot of their own making that is very disturbing in a democracy.


38 posted on 05/18/2016 8:31:16 AM PDT by sparklite2 ( "The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism." -Jonah Goldberg)
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To: bert

> “there is no such data”

You are correct. By such data you mean a ‘representative sample’.

A representative sample in statistics means a subset of the population, a subset that has all the characteristics of the larger population.

To get a representative sample, a sampling plan must be designed and executed.

But sampling plans today are impossible to execute because people either are not home, are not going to pickup the phone, or will hangup; these are the ‘non-respondents’ and they make up about 90% of original sampling plans. Those few that do pickup, the 10% ‘respondents’, are not representative.

It is interesting to see how the primary polls favored Trump pretty much across the board in nearly every state. The polling was indeed invalid because the underlying sampling plans were impossible to execute.

But there was one ‘signal’ that all the pollsters did not account for but which they picked up on, the ‘Elephant In The Room’. That Elephant comprised the nearly 100 million Americans sitting home out of work.

Trump’s leading polls were driven in large part by pissed-off Americans sitting at home or working PT jobs, unsatisfied with the state of the economy and their lives as a result.

Silver didn’t pickup on that signal because likely he was screwing around with his sampling plan trying to reach what he considered as the ‘larger moderate, employed’ population. In other words, he kept working his call list to reach more of what he thought was a real representative sample, and that is where his bias entered. The man is stupid. I imagine he was getting the same results as other polls but his paycheck was conditioned on his coming up with something that was ‘missed’ by others. So his ‘clever crafting’ became ‘salacious stupidity’ at best, but more likely a deceitful sellout at worst. His stupidity stems from the same Beltway well that hypothesizes the media has the power to destroy any candidate of their choosing. He’s stupid because he missed the role of social media and their near absolute hatred and contempt for the national news media.

I know statistics better than most people on the planet. Silver is a lightweight, a PhD reject that got his name in the spotlight with the syndicated news media. His apologizing in this crappola report is an attempt to smooth over his stupidity and get in the good graces of those that feed his belly. He’s on his way out.


39 posted on 05/18/2016 10:03:17 AM PDT by Hostage (ARTICLE V)
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What he failed to take into account was Trump being a self financed candidate through the nomination process. This takes away the puppet strings to the elites.

This is what terrifies them, not his positions per se, but his complete autonomy.

Perot was also pulling this off in a different way and they went after his family and he backed off. Trump seems to have either been able to prevent that, or it hasn’t happened...yet.


40 posted on 05/18/2016 4:17:53 PM PDT by Crimson Elephant
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