• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Nate Silver is back

Cheerful Charlie

Cheerful Charlie

Contributor
Joined
Nov 10, 2005
Messages
9,334
Location
Houston, Texas
Basic Beliefs
Strong Atheist
From Slashdot

"After a parting of ways with the New York Times after calling 50 out of 50 states right in the 2012 elections, Nate Silver has relaunched FiveThirtyEight as a website dedicated to data journalism under the auspices of ESPN. Silver has expanded his staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and instead of focusing on politics exclusively FiveThirtyEight's coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports. According to Silver, his team has a broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism including statistical analysis, data visualization, computer programming and data-literate reporting. 'One of our roles will be to critique incautious uses of statistics when they arise elsewhere in news coverage. "After a parting of ways with the New York Times after calling 50 out of 50 states right in the 2012 elections, Nate Silver has relaunched FiveThirtyEight as a website dedicated to data journalism under the auspices of ESPN. Silver has expanded his staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and instead of focusing on politics exclusively FiveThirtyEight's coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports. According to Silver, his team has a broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism including statistical analysis, data visualization, computer programming and data-literate reporting. 'One of our roles will be to critique incautious uses of statistics when they arise elsewhere in news coverage.

538 is up and running. http://fivethirtyeight.com/
Its always nice to have a good source of information and competent fact checking

Cheerful Charlie
 
Nate Silver "predicted" that Obama would win the 2008 election, despite the fact that we know Obama won only because of massive voter fraud. How could Nate Silver possibly have "predicted" all those millions of fake votes from ACORN using only poll numbers? C'mon, people, you need to learn to think for yourselves instead of just blindly believing whatever the Liberal Media Conspiracy tells you to think! Stop being such sheep! [/conservolibertarian]
 
Underseer said:
Nate Silver "predicted" that Obama would win the 2008 election, despite the fact that we know Obama won only because of massive voter fraud. How could Nate Silver possibly have "predicted" all those millions of fake votes from ACORN using only poll numbers? C'mon, people, you need to learn to think for yourselves instead of just blindly believing whatever the Liberal Media Conspiracy tells you to think! Stop being such sheep! [/conservolibertarian]
Click to expand...

Not to mention that so many people in 2008 were allowed to vote even if they didn't have a driver's license. How absurd is that? The constitution clearly states that only drivers should be eligible to vote. Why anyone would want pedestrians and people who ride buses to vote is beyond me. It is unAmerican.

.
 
Notice How The Right Wing Hate Media Ignores Him And 538

And who does not like when good ole Nate all by himself made those jack asses Karl Rove, Dick Morris, et al., look like the fools that they are in 2012?
I hope the guy plans his moves wisely because the dude gots madd skills. 538 all the way!

Peace

Pegasus
 
pegasus8 said:
And who does not like when good ole Nate all by himself made those jack asses Karl Rove, Dick Morris, et al., look like the fools that they are in 2012?
I hope the guy plans his moves wisely because the dude gots madd skills. 538 all the way!

Peace

Pegasus
Click to expand...

If by "made those jackasses [...] look like fools" you mean "participated in a conspiracy to steal the election and destroy democracy," then I agree. I bet he's also part of the conspiracy that involves Obama's weather machine. I mean, if he's privy to something that sensitive, who knows how many conspiracies he's involved with? [/teabagger]
 
Nate Silver is an excellent game caller for a game that shouldn't be played. A democracy needs to be the people deciding what they want and not some sort of game between the Red and the Blue team. As long as our political system is so screwed up, there will be a place for Nate to keep calling the games....kinda like Howard Cosell as he called all the boxing matches, commenting on the process of a couple of guys getting punchy.:shrug:
 
Nate Silver is back and already coming under attack by the NY Times for having the unmitigated gall to claim that Republicans have a 60% chance of winning the Senate. Of course, all of that may having something to do with leaving the Times. He no longer has to toe the politically correct line.

I'm not ready to buy everything that a nerdy tech guy has to say just be because he crunched the numbers, but it is good to have someone who will do the numbers and report the results whether or not he personally likes those results. I'm also glad to see that he will extend his activities to critiquing the abuse, certainly widespread in the media as well as among politicians, to abuse statistics to promote what they want rather than what those particular statistics actually establish. I hope he's not too good at his sports predictions though. It will destroy the gaming industry as well as the interest in the game.
 
Axulus said:
He's predicting a 60% chance for Republicans to win a majority in the Senate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...4/03/24/dscc-pushes-back-against-nate-silver/
Click to expand...

Democrats are defending ten vulnerable seats. Republicans are defending one. Of the ten Dem seats, 3, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia are in red states where the Dem incumbent is retiring and the likely Republican candidate is comfortably ahead of the likely Dem nominee.

Of the remaining 8 vulnerable seats, then, Republicans would need to win half, 4 seats, to gain control of the Senate. Not knowing anything else, you would have to say that Republicans chances of winning half of the close contests are pretty good. So Silver's prediction looks to be a pretty good one, but you don't need to go through all the statistical gyrations that he employs to figure that out.
 
boneyard bill said:
Democrats are defending ten vulnerable seats. Republicans are defending one. Of the ten Dem seats, 3, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia are in red states where the Dem incumbent is retiring and the likely Republican candidate is comfortably ahead of the likely Dem nominee.

Of the remaining 8 vulnerable seats, then, Republicans would need to win half, 4 seats, to gain control of the Senate. Not knowing anything else, you would have to say that Republicans chances of winning half of the close contests are pretty good. So Silver's prediction looks to be a pretty good one, but you don't need to go through all the statistical gyrations that he employs to figure that out.
Click to expand...

Our political system has created a place for folks like Nate Silver, and I grant he is good at following the games being played, but we have a political system that has impoverished itself in terms of being a marketplace of ideas. It makes less and less difference which crew of corporate political hacks get in office. Obama and his first term should have already proven that to us. Nate is only monitoring a very limited field. True, they play dirty. So what?

We could and should be a great country and a light unto the world. Merely fighting to keep a bunch of grafters from overturning another bunch of grafters is keeping our country from that distinction. It also is creating great misery both at home and abroad. We need transformative politics if we are to ever cope with our growing social problems. Thanks to Nate, and those like him, all we get is news comparisons between totally compromised totally owned candidates.
 
arkirk said:
Our political system has created a place for folks like Nate Silver, and I grant he is good at following the games being played, but we have a political system that has impoverished itself in terms of being a marketplace of ideas. It makes less and less difference which crew of corporate political hacks get in office. Obama and his first term should have already proven that to us. Nate is only monitoring a very limited field. True, they play dirty. So what?

We could and should be a great country and a light unto the world. Merely fighting to keep a bunch of grafters from overturning another bunch of grafters is keeping our country from that distinction. It also is creating great misery both at home and abroad. We need transformative politics if we are to ever cope with our growing social problems. Thanks to Nate, and those like him, all we get is news comparisons between totally compromised totally owned candidates.
Click to expand...

I agree with a good deal of this. There are some differences in the two parties, but it manifests mostly in differences in rhetoric. The continuity between the Obama Administration and the Bush Administration is quite remarkable if you ignore their rhetoric and look only at their actions. The same is true of Bush and Clinton. Clinton bombed Iraq and accused Saddam of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Liberation Act passed under Clinton.

I don't think a Republican Administration would have proposed anything resembling Obamacare, but apart from that, Obama hasn't done much that I wouldn't have expected from McCain. In fact, McCain actually criticized Obama's plan to put more troops in Afghanistan, but that's because he wanted them for Iraq. Meanwhile, McCain was all for Libya and for intervening in Syria. But McCain is the hawkiest of Republicans. Obama appears to be more hawkish in his actual policies than the average Republican is in his rhetoric. And then there's civil liberties where Obama has even out-done Bush.
 
boneyard bill said:
I agree with a good deal of this. There are some differences in the two parties, but it manifests mostly in differences in rhetoric. The continuity between the Obama Administration and the Bush Administration is quite remarkable if you ignore their rhetoric and look only at their actions. The same is true of Bush and Clinton. Clinton bombed Iraq and accused Saddam of possessing weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Liberation Act passed under Clinton.

I don't think a Republican Administration would have proposed anything resembling Obamacare, but apart from that, Obama hasn't done much that I wouldn't have expected from McCain. In fact, McCain actually criticized Obama's plan to put more troops in Afghanistan, but that's because he wanted them for Iraq. Meanwhile, McCain was all for Libya and for intervening in Syria. But McCain is the hawkiest of Republicans. Obama appears to be more hawkish in his actual policies than the average Republican is in his rhetoric. And then there's civil liberties where Obama has even out-done Bush.
Click to expand...

you do realize that the ACA is a Republican plan, right? Its Bob Dole's plan and it's Mitt Romney's plan, both of whom, last time I checked, were GOP.
 
AthenaAwakened said:
you do realize that the ACA is a Republican plan, right? Its Bob Dole's plan and it's Mitt Romney's plan, both of whom, last time I checked, were GOP.
Click to expand...

I realize that those plans were used, to some extent, as a model for Obamacare, but I don't think they are the exact same plans. Dole's plan, in particular, would have expanded health care coverage, but it was not a universal health care plan.
 
boneyard bill said:
I realize that those plans were used, to some extent, as a model for Obamacare, but I don't think they are the exact same plans. Dole's plan, in particular, would have expanded health care coverage, but it was not a universal health care plan.
Click to expand...

and had President Dole passed a plan, it would not have been exactly what he proposed on the campaign trail.

Obama is a moderate Republican who doesn't hate strongly enough to be a registered Republican in today's GOP.
 
boneyard bill said:
I realize that those plans were used, to some extent, as a model for Obamacare, but I don't think they are the exact same plans. Dole's plan, in particular, would have expanded health care coverage, but it was not a universal health care plan.
Click to expand...

Neither is the ACA.
 
AthenaAwakened said:
and had President Dole passed a plan, it would not have been exactly what he proposed on the campaign trail.

Obama is a moderate Republican who doesn't hate strongly enough to be a registered Republican in today's GOP.
Click to expand...

I don't recall Dole putting forward a health care plan during his presidential campaign. He put forward a plan in 1994 as an alternative to HillaryCare when the Republicans were still in the minority, but after HillaryCare failed, I don't think Dole pursued it any further.

- - - Updated - - -

ksen said:
Neither is the ACA.
Click to expand...

But there are still significant differences. I'm quite sure Dole's plan did not require abortion coverage or birth control, for example. In fact, as the link Trausti provided above shows, Dole's plan did not include any mandates whatsoever.
 
My opinion on the new FiveThirtyEight is basically that of Paul Krugman, Noah Smith and Brad DeLong.

Silver looks likely to wind up like John Duns Scotus. Brilliant in his own right, but with followers so stupid that they named the Dunce after him.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom