Thursday, November 15, 2012

Innumeracy, Polling Data, and Statistical Models

It was suppose to be a close election, wasn't it?  What happened?  Sophisticated models like those used by Nate Silver actually called it correctly.  I had thought that political pundits were saying the election was going to be close as a get-out-the-vote ploy, but according to this recent Scientific American Blog, the pundits really just didn't understand the model.  Statistical projections apparently are just too complicated for them.

The blog entry also introduced me to an awesome Nate Silverism:  “When criticized by pundits, Nate Silver doesn’t get angry – he regresses toward the mean.”

Can you believe that they can predict the weather using statistical models?  They can't do that - weathermen can only actually tell us the weather right now, right?

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