Duh!
Duh!
Only if you are a stiff-necked academic or nerdy-ass mathemetician who doesn’t read or write news releases or news stories. The rest of us understand what he meant just fine. We understand that he didn’t go back in time and predict the data he based his model on. We are not stupid idiots who believe in time travel, or circular arguments. Thanks for your guidance though.
First of all, I obviously don’t think they believe in time travel. I think they are being deliberately misleading if no dishonest in hopes of fooling people. You for instance were obviously confused by it and for some reason rather than just admit it you’re still defending them pages later albeit under a completely new argument than you originally were.
And look, as far as reading too much into imprecise language - I’m proposing we interpret “this model has correctly predicted the winner” to be a claim that “this model has correctly predicted the winner.”
There’s no point in even discussing the matter with you if you’re going to sincerely claim that a more straightforward reading of “correctly predicted the winner” is that it “would have predicted the last 8 elections, had it existed then, which of course it couldn’t have.”
Even if it is what they meant, which it obviously isn’t, you’re reading into it and giving them the benefit of the doubt for no reason except that you don’t want to admit you were wrong.
Seriously? You think the people can be fooled into believing in time travel?
No, YOU were confused because you are only capable of using one side of your brain.
And that would be a silly conclusion on your part. It would be you thinking you are smarter, when it’s actually going over your head.
Then stop.
Right. So they meant that they traveled back in time! They were deliberately trying to fool people into believing that! Or they are too stupid themselves to know that time travel can’t happen! That’s got to be it - they wrote it, after all.
Seriously, go do your math and leave language to those of us who can handle it.
Well you’re just being insulting now so this will be my last post on the subject, but for the record, they claimed that they predicted all of the past 8 elections to trick people into thinking their model has already been proven. You’re the only one talking about time travel and I have no idea why.
So at 538, the trendlines have blown up in favor of Obama over the last week or so. Romney’s chance of winning is down to 25.2%, which is I believe their lowest to date.
I know that Nate Silver said the model might punish Romney for a subpar convention bump. Other polling has come back with poor news for Romney. Another important data point is that adaher has been showing up with fewer select, hand-picked cherries.
Is there anything else going on? Is this race really getting out of reach for Romney or what? Don’t get me wrong. Ithink the trendlines are awesome. I just want to get a better sense as to how solid this is.
You insult “people” by saying they are too dumb to know that the past can be “predicted” and that this proves a model has predicted anything.
Yes, the model is proven to fit past data. That’s evidence that it could predict the future. Nothing whatsoever controversial about that. It’s plain old science. It is not sufficient to make it a good model, but it is not false.
I think there have been economic things that are positive for Obama, and I think also that the longer things go, the more weight the polls get.
Hmmm. I looked back, and it’s not a news release that said that, it was the news story at The Daily Caller.
The UC site doesn’t say that. It says:
So it’s either the Daily Caller using clever language, or simply misunderstanding the model. Probably the latter.
So much for all that.
Actually there is a press release directly from the University of Colorado and Dr Berry himself is directly quoted as saying “For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner” by the University Communications Office that put out the press release.
Ah, never mind then.
Reading this, I agree that the language is too misleading and shouldn’t have been said that way.
I don’t think they were trying to lie or deliberately mislead though.
As I understand it it’s basically that the RNC bounce is small, and this cycle Nate is actively adjusting based on the expected bounce. So at this point Romney should have seen a +4 bounce - making him about +3 overall. But not of the nation-wide polls are putting him there - the very best is showing +2 while Gallup has him -1. So the model is translating that as Romney actually losing support from where he was a week ago.
And, as we get closer, each week will push the model more confidently in one direction unless the polls are essentially tied. If Obama stays at +1 from here until election day his likelihood of winning will only go up as he runs out the clock (except immediately after the DNC - the model expects Obama to get about a 2-point bump at this time next week).
I think there is very little chance that the model won’t have at least a 75% favorite on election day - it was something like 97% on election day in 2008.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think they were trying to lie for some sort of political gain, like to aid Romney. I think their communications office did it knowing it was a cheap way to get more interest in the publication. But I also think they went pretty far over the line.
Based on some of the other info on this thread, it would appear that the “predicted the past eight elections” nonsense was written by a PR flack whose understanding of mathematical statistics is rivaled by that of a newly hatched sparrow.
While it’s clear that Romney will have to do better if he wants to win, it seems to me that a lot of liberals are feeling undeservedely cocky and self-assured. Here are some polling figures:
[ul]
[li]Gallup[/li][li]National average[/li][li]CO[/li][li]FL[/li][li]IA[/li][li]MI[/li][li]NV[/li][li]NH[/li][li]NC[/li][li]OH[/li][li]VA[/li][li]WI[/li][/ul]
You can merrily tell each other that Obama’s winning in “every battleground state except North Carolina”, but you’d be ignorning the fact that most of those leads are within the margin of error of the polls.
A 2-point swing in the polls would mean the loss of CO, FL, IA, OH, VA, and WI, which (along with NC) would mean a Romney victory.
No, looking back, I’d say it is worse than that. I should have read it in full. I think the hack just didn’t understand what was happening.
Well obviously. And a two point swing to Obama would mean a blowout like 2008. All we can talk about is the current reality, and it’s relation to this point in the campaign (which is historically the high-water mark for the out-of-power party’s candidate). And by that measure, Romney is clearly an underdog somewhere between 2-to-1 and 3-to-1 against.
What’s your basis for that statement?
The challenger’s party traditionally has its convention first, and conventions normally are followed by bumps. If he goes on to resoundingly win a debate (as the press calls it), that can be the high point, but traditionally that doesn’t happen. Short of that, this is as good as it’s going to get for Romney.
Well, here’s the polling numbers for 2008 (scroll down for graph).That red spike ca. September 1 exactly coincides with the RNC which ran from 9/1 through 9/4. His high was September 7.
Here’s 2004 - Kerry’s high point was August 1, 2 days after the DNC ended.
In 2 minutes of searching, I can’t find national poll numbers over time for 2000.
I feel your frustration; I see this as a perfectly valid way of doing political science.
If the method would have correctly predicted election results, then, well, that’s impressive. (Whether it’s in the pluperfect subjunctive or not!) If it actually has a model of the reasons for the results, that’s even better.
(This is why I would reject any system that predicts lottery numbers, since we know that lottery numbers are random. Such a system would have to demonstrate a statistical bias in lottery numbers. e.g., that the last 100 numbers picked have been 62 odd numbers and 38 even numbers.)
More for irony than for debate, I’ll point out that Harold Camping, when he was predicting the end of the world, used a specific method of Biblical interpretation, but, then, he went and did something I thought was rather clever. He asked if his method, applied in, say, 30 B.C., could have predicted the exact date of the birth of Jesus as the Messiah. He worked with the texts that an educated person of that time could have had access to, and he used his own method of interpretation, and concluded, to his satisfaction, that, yes, it would have allowed him to prophecy the birth of Jesus.
A very major problem was that no one else was satisfied with his reasoning…