Email: Nate Silver Disgrace

Hey,

you have been informing us about this Nate Silver guy, is there any way he can come “clear” this election? The way things are going, it seems as he’s going to get burned whatever the outcome.There is a great column/article/whatever that talks about Nate Silver which can be found here. Silver got the British election all wrong. Yet, he gets a pass.

Jay Cost finally admitted he was the Nate Silver before Nate Silver back in 2004:

Old readers of mine from 2004 will recall I was doing what 538 does today. Deriving probability estimates from polls…

…It is actually very easy to do. I don’t do it anymore because I don’t think it is a good idea.

Cost says he ‘outgrew’ the practice. If you notice, aside from partisans, it is young kids who hover over the 538 oracle.

My problem is that this is not actually political science. Science is not to be used to hit people around with a club or to stand on and pretend you’re superior to everyone else. Science is, first most, fun. And science cannot be done without debate, without people arguing different hypothesis, different data. There was a time when scientists like Hawking and Golding argued about whether the universe was expanding. Eventually, the data would come out that showed the universe was expanding. However, Golding wasn’t wrong to argue against Hawking. Anyone who can argue against Hawking is very smart. Science is fun. If you’re never wrong, you’re not doing anything.

What I see is Nate Silver and his 538 model shutting down conversations and debates of political science. There are many ways to look at political elections. Historical indicators. Economic indicators. There is more than just polls, especially newspaper polls. Going around, shoving one statistical model out of many in people’s faces, is not science. Shouting down people who disagree is not science.

That video of Silver going and talking right when the Bickers and Berry forecast came out, about how economic indicators shouldn’t be looked at told me that this is not about statistical models. This is more about controlling the layperson’s perception of what is and what is not an analysis. This is something I’d expect to see in China or Russia, not in America.

You don’t need anyone to tell you who is ahead and who isn’t. Just watch the candidates of where they go and where the money goes.

Where is Mitt Romney? He’s in Pennsylvania. A head-fake like McCain’s? Then why is Bill Clinton doing four campaign stops in Pennsylvania? An ex-president wouldn’t normally be doing this. If Obama did it, the gig would be up.

Only two more days until the house of cards comes crashing down.