Saturday, 26 January 2013

"In some cases, [Nate] Silver tends to attribute successful reasoning to the use of Bayesian methods..."

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"... without any evidence that those particular analyses were actually performed in Bayesian fashion."
For instance, he writes about Bob Voulgaris, a basketball gambler,
Bob’s money is on Bayes too. He does not literally apply Bayes’ theorem every time he makes a prediction. But his practice of testing statistical data in the context of hypotheses and beliefs derived from his basketball knowledge is very Bayesian, as is his comfort with accepting probabilistic answers to his questions.
But, judging from the description in the previous thirty pages, Voulgaris follows instinct, not fancy Bayesian math. Here, Silver seems to be using “Bayesian” not to mean the use of Bayes’s theorem but, rather, the general strategy of combining many different kinds of information.
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Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Is Nate Silver "concerned that during future elections, the accuracy of your predictions will lull readers into a mindset of 'it has been foretold, therefore I needn’t bother to vote'"?

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Yes, "a bit."

Did Nate Silver "enjoy getting the ire of pundits (not the few who actually critiqued your method, models, or assumptions, but those who just dismissed your work wholesale)"?
At some point in the last few weeks of the election, I guess I decided to lean into the upside outcome a little bit in terms of pushing back at the pundits in my public appearances — as opposed to emphasizing the uncertainty in the model, as I had for most of the year....

Stupid poker analogy: part of playing well is in maximizing the amount of value you get from a hand in the event that things go well, in addition to mitigating your losses if they don't.
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