Final Stretch Election ThreadFollow

No. You are wrong.

Go look up how statistical models and polling works.

Your claim contradicts math. Your only counter would be a proof on how less than 1/2 of 1% accurately depicts the remaining 99%. Since it's mathematically impossible and the definition of statistics supports that, I would like for you prove that. You can ridicule me in your Nobel speech.



The point was to show the polls of what people see and not to show how polling works. What's the point of an accurate poll if it gets saturated with contradicting polls? How can you say that polling matters if you can't even differentiate an accurate poll from a bogus polls. Although that was a comedic skit, those polls were meant to be taken seriously.

Because (and this does come up in the interview) the point isn't to hang on each individual number. You get a large enough base that the outliers come out in the wash. My favorite quote from Silver was a tweet he made saying "The point of examining poll aggregates is that you don't need to litigate each individual poll". So when Gbaji starts hooting that some poll was D+5 and he says it really should be D+2 or whatever, whether or not he's even accurate sort of doesn't matter because there's so many polls at this point (Silver says in the before linked blog entry that Ohio is a sample size of 17,000+ people right now) that the static gets largely worked out. Likewise, saying "Poll A says O+2 but Poll B says R+1 so no one can be right!!" is foolish because it's not about just polls A & B.

Now, granted, Gbaji wants everyone to believe that every poll is flawed because that's the only way he can point to a Romney win. So be it. And you want to continue to insist that polling and poll aggregates can't be accurate because "1/2 of 1%!!" and that's fine as well. Previous election results don't support you and Gbaji is clutching at strands of hope but I can't say it affects me much.

Romney can potentially win. I don't think he will but even a 1-in-5 chance is a 1-in-5 chance. But the odds are well against him.

You do realize that there is a difference between statistics and math right? Statistics use Math, They aren't one in the same. It is mathematically impossible to accurately determine the outcome by taking a sample that is less than 1/2 of 1% of a population. At best, it is an educated guess. I'm not saying the poll will never be right, but that's the point of statistics, if it weren't ever right, then what would be the purpose of statistics? But, once you crossover into the mathematics domain, it simply isn't true anymore. It's a middle school concept.

on a side note Silver is going to be back on the daily show on the 7th. I'm interested in watching that one.

Alma, go read the signal and the noise.

Please define a "moran".

Totally. If Obama wins it'll be somewhat, yep, yep, I'm awesome.

Pretty sure 1/3 is irrational. But, go ahead, prove me wrong..

1/3 is irrational?

1 and 3 are both integers...

You can get help with that. just sayin.