{"id":420,"date":"2012-10-31T11:08:11","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T18:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.reed.edu\/politika\/?p=420"},"modified":"2014-03-18T10:10:20","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T17:10:20","slug":"nate-silver-and-the-binomial-theorem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/31\/nate-silver-and-the-binomial-theorem\/","title":{"rendered":"Nate Silver and the Binomial Theorem"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 282px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRoPAWFdRVQlRRaZhOuo_TTyCJGCrg_28UQAgnNQCvbXZTs3IPUdw\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRoPAWFdRVQlRRaZhOuo_TTyCJGCrg_28UQAgnNQCvbXZTs3IPUdw\" alt=\"\" width=\"272\" height=\"185\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Courtesy of thenandnow.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There has been a lot of chatter about the meaning of Nate Silver&#8217;s current election forecast.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, what the commentary reveals is less about Silver and more about <a href=\"http:\/\/simplystatistics.org\/post\/34635539704\/on-weather-forecasts-nate-silver-and-the\">statistical illiteracy.<\/a> \u00a0Silver&#8217;s model is complex, but the basic logic is quite simple: he runs a forecasting model based on a lot of state public opinion polls, then creates thousands and thousands of random &#8220;draws&#8221; from the predictions of that model.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, approximately 3\/4 of those random draws have Obama winning the electoral college. \u00a0Sounds good if you are a Democrat but keep in mind:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>25% of the draws have Romney winning.<\/li>\n<li>This election is run once, not thousands of times.<\/li>\n<li>Because the model is based on an electoral college victory, small changes in a small number of states&#8211;for instance, a 1% shift in the vote in Ohio&#8211;could have large effects on the forecast.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/30\/what-too-close-to-call-really-means\/\">Andrew Gelman<\/a>, a political statistician at Columbia, provides an apt metaphor. \u00a0In football, if your team is \u00a0leading by 2 points with less than 5 minutes to go, your team will win 65% of the time.<\/p>\n<p>Does this mean you feel confident with a 2 point lead with 5 minutes left? \u00a0What if John Elway is the quarterback for the other team? \u00a0Maybe you don&#8217;t think Mitt Romney has a John Elway drive in his campaign, but look at his standing just a few weeks ago, and look at it now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There has been a lot of chatter about the meaning of Nate Silver&#8217;s current election forecast. Unfortunately, what the commentary reveals is less about Silver and more about statistical illiteracy. \u00a0Silver&#8217;s model is complex, but the basic logic is quite &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/2012\/10\/31\/nate-silver-and-the-binomial-theorem\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty","category-paul-gronke","category-political-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/politika\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}