Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I think this is wrong.

Someone says "it COULD be stuck for weeks"

It gets unstuck earlier, fine. Doesn't invalidate the possibility.

The criticism is moot. If anyone had made bets, then I'd take both more seriously.




We see this all the time with political polling.

"Oh, Nate Silver said Trump only had a 30% chance of winning the election, but he did, so Nate Silver is an idiot!"


Nate Silver wasn’t just a little off - he was massively off outside of accepted norms for polling.

Multiple times no less.


No, he really wasn't. In 2016 he was one of the most optimistic of the major poll aggregators on Trump's chances; he had Trump at 30% when others had him at much lower odds.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-fivethirtyeight-gav...

> Our final forecast, issued early Tuesday evening, had Trump with a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.1 By comparison, other models tracked by The New York Times put Trump’s odds at: 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent and less than 1 percent.

As for 2020:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-werent-great-...

> This year was definitely a little weird, given that the vote share margins were often fairly far off from the polls (including in some high-profile examples such as Wisconsin and Florida). But at the same time, a high percentage of states (likely 48 out of 50) were “called” correctly, as was the overall Electoral College and popular vote winner (Biden). And that’s usually how polls are judged: Did they identify the right winner?

(He also doesn't do the polling. He's an analyst, not a pollster.)


Lol - quoting himself to back up his performance?

How about linking to others and not him defending his performance. Of course he’s going to have excuses.

Live a little and maybe even pick sources that might not align politically with you too for an alternate POV. Prevents “surprises”. Because as someone with no love lost on either party the election results were not a surprise - you just have to look across all sources, not just the ones that tell you what you want to hear.


You're most welcome to "link to others" so we can discuss their specific critiques.

The "aggregate the polls" approach appears to have called 48/50 races correctly, so I'm fairly comfortable with it.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: