Posts tagged Nate Silver

Cooking the Books or Just Rewarming Them?

16
1 month ago
by Monotreme in

chicken eggOn Thurs­day, Cook Polit­i­cal Report released their Par­ti­san Voter Index for the 2014 elec­tion. It’s a subscriber-​​only prod­uct, so you can either read some of the high­lights below or buy a copy.

In the full press release/​analysis by David Wasser­man, which is well worth read­ing, he explains how the age-​​old “is it nat­ural forces or an unnat­ural ger­ry­man­der?”, chicken-​​egg, nature-​​nurture ques­tion might be answered. Sim­ply put, with all three koans in the foun­tain, the answer to each is, “both”. They co-​​evolved. (more…)

Out with the Intrade

13
2 months ago
by Monotreme in
Quick: Is this a graph of Herman Cain's fortunes, or Intrade's?

Quick: Is this a graph of Her­man Cain’s for­tunes, or Intrade’s?

Intrade had a lot of trad­ing mar­kets. You could place a bet on whether Marco Rubio would be elected Pres­i­dent in 2016. You could bet on the fea­si­bil­ity of cold fusion. You could bet on who would win a Grammy.

The one con­tract that Intrade never car­ried: “Intrade will close abruptly on Sun­day, March 10.” Too bad, because some­one could have made a mint on that one.

It is unclear whether Intrade will ever come back. Most experts say it’s unlikely.

After the jump, you’ll see what you get when you type “Intrade​.com” into your browser. (more…)

The Year in Science 2012

13
4 months ago
by Monotreme in
Ian Sample explains what a Higgs Boson is.

Ian Sam­ple explains how to find a Higgs Boson.

The year 2012 was a big one for sci­en­tific advance­ments. So big, in fact, that Michael and DC have already touched upon sci­ence (includ­ing sta­tis­tics and math­e­mat­ics) in their year-​​end reviews.

After years of being excluded from polit­i­cal deci­sions, sci­ence resurged into the pub­lic pol­icy arena this year. It seems a tip­ping point has been reached:

  • The Big Bang The­ory is the highest-​​rated series show on Amer­i­can television.
  • Nate Silver’s book The Sig­nal and the Noise (researched by Arikia Mil­likan) was released, to wide acclaim. (And just to bring things full cir­cle, most Log­a­rchism read­ers and com­menters met on Silver’s FiveThir​tyEight​.com blog; Monotreme has been called by one of his stu­dents “Shel­don [Cooper], but with a per­son­al­ity” and is one of the FiveThir­tyEight faith­ful; and Mil­likan is the descen­dant of Robert Mil­likan of the famous oil drop exper­i­ment which marked the begin­ning of the early 20th cen­tury explo­sion in phys­i­cal chem­istry.) Nate, like Shel­don, is now the toast of the town in all his geeky glory.
  • Even con­ser­v­a­tives are will­ing to grudg­ingly acknowl­edge anthro­pogenic global warm­ing. David Frum and Matt Ygle­sias are even advo­cat­ing for a car­bon tax.

Among the other top sto­ries in sci­ence and med­i­cine in 2012:

(more…)

Lessons Learned

280
6 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

The dust is finally set­tling from the elec­tion. And I’ll be talk­ing more later about some of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Today, though, I’m inter­ested in some navel gaz­ing. There are many lessons to be learned from this elec­tion, by many parties.

I’ll cover some high-​​level views today, but next week I’m going to delve into some of the big­ger top­ics from the White House and Sen­ate perspective.

And, with that, here are some lessons.  (more…)

A Gravis Fraud

24
7 months ago
by Logarchism.com in

The real Doug Kaplan, the man behind Gravis Marketing

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle was sub­mit­ted by dawolf, one of our reg­u­lar read­ers and com­menters. We always wel­come your contributions.

Another Editor’s Note: I have pub­lished an update on this.

Much has been writ­ten of late regard­ing whether polls need to be “unskewed” due to incor­rect Democratic/​Republican reg­is­tra­tion. But what if there are results being made up sim­ply out of whole cloth?

One poll­ster that arrived on the scene recently is Gravis Mar­ket­ing who has shown a strong Repub­li­can house bias this cycle. A recent inves­ti­ga­tion of Gravis by Demo­c­ra­tic Under­ground made it clear that there were ques­tions sur­round­ing the company.

This is not the first time that a poll­ster has been accused of pub­lish­ing “poll results” that do not cor­re­spond to actual polled indi­vid­u­als. Nate Sil­ver at FiveThir­tyEight made such an accu­sa­tion of the now-​​defunct Research 2000 on June 29, 2010.

How­ever, ques­tions such as those raised by Demo­c­ra­tic Under­ground are not evi­dence of guilt. So is there any real evi­dence that the work they are com­mit­ting is fraudulent?

Here is a recent poll they claim to have con­ducted is cur­rently avail­able, with crosstabs. The exec­u­tive sum­mary states

On Sep­tem­ber 29th – 30th, 2012, Gravis Mar­ket­ing, a non-​​partisan research firm, con­ducted a sur­vey of 914 likely vot­ers in the state of Florida regard­ing their likely vote for a given pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, sen­ate can­di­date, and other social and eco­nomic issues impor­tant to voters.

Nine hun­dred four­teen likely vot­ers. This num­ber is key. (more…)

Rick Perry Superstar

39
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Perry is appar­ently con­sid­er­ing a run for the 2012 Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nomination.

The spec­u­la­tion regard­ing the Perry cam­paign was fueled, in large part, by the implo­sion of the Newt Gin­grich cam­paign on June 9. The advis­ers who left sud­denly all had close ties to Gov. Perry. At this writ­ing, he is in sec­ond place on Intrade with 16% prob­a­bil­ity of gar­ner­ing the nom­i­na­tion, accord­ing to traders. On the graph, you can see the “bump” in Perry’s num­bers on June 10: both the price of a Perry con­tract (line) and the trad­ing vol­ume (green bars) spiked after the defec­tions from Gingrich’s campaign.

Nate Sil­ver has writ­ten favor­able blog posts assess­ing Perry’s chances on May 18, June 9, June 14, (and, just in case you missed his point, June 15). Silver’s assess­ment is that Perry is a strong con­tender for the nom­i­na­tion, and has put Perry in his “top tier” of can­di­dates with a 1-​​in-​​8 chance of win­ning the nomination.

Who is Rick Perry? (more…)

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