Nate Silver is the founding, or one of the original founders, of 538 - which has, I see, been acquired by ABC News. He’s a statistician of some repute, and competent; he’s pretty good at explaining and summarizing stats to non-math types. He’s gotten a lot of heat for forecasting results that were wrong, starting with the Clinton/Trump election in 2016, but if much of that is because people are terrible at understanding probability, and if you tell the average person something has an 80% chance of happening, they take it at a guarantee.
The issue is that 538 was pretty reliable at the start, but then something happened with polling and things started to go against predictions frequently enough that they sort of became just another voice - instead of a source you might use to bet on. The ABC acquisition probably didn’t help.
Anyway, I digress. Nate was the statistician face behind 538. I don’t know what he’s doing now.
Has it corrected? He mentions in TFA that polling started to get really wrong as early voting for more popular, and wasn’t properly accounted for. I admit, I was one of the ones that lost faith in 538 because of the repeated dissonance. They knew something was off, but seemed unable to adjust their models to account for it. I still appreciate his analysis, but I’d love it if he’s addressed the issues in the modeling.
I have no idea who Nate Silver is but he’s trying desperately for Gold at mental gymnastics.
Or pure tripe.
Nate Silver is the founding, or one of the original founders, of 538 - which has, I see, been acquired by ABC News. He’s a statistician of some repute, and competent; he’s pretty good at explaining and summarizing stats to non-math types. He’s gotten a lot of heat for forecasting results that were wrong, starting with the Clinton/Trump election in 2016, but if much of that is because people are terrible at understanding probability, and if you tell the average person something has an 80% chance of happening, they take it at a guarantee.
The issue is that 538 was pretty reliable at the start, but then something happened with polling and things started to go against predictions frequently enough that they sort of became just another voice - instead of a source you might use to bet on. The ABC acquisition probably didn’t help.
Anyway, I digress. Nate was the statistician face behind 538. I don’t know what he’s doing now.
He has a substack. He left 538 and took his election model with him.
Has it corrected? He mentions in TFA that polling started to get really wrong as early voting for more popular, and wasn’t properly accounted for. I admit, I was one of the ones that lost faith in 538 because of the repeated dissonance. They knew something was off, but seemed unable to adjust their models to account for it. I still appreciate his analysis, but I’d love it if he’s addressed the issues in the modeling.