Before anyone jumps on this, this is not a polemic against FiveThirtyEight's or anyone else's modeling choices. As I say in the piece, I was hopeful early on modeling would cut down on misleading horse-race coverage. I even wrote a piece on that! But that's not what's happened.
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For weather models we have detailed, fine-grained grasp of the underlying dynamics, a mountain of data, and chances to test our predictions every day. Presidential elections? Numbers fly around every four years, then lots of debate and no conclusion. Because it *cannot* conclude.pic.twitter.com/jcgtT60WTS
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Electoral forecast presentation has gotten better since 2016 but the public understanding is still not there. That probability number is not communicating this fact: as things stand, they do not, and cannot, rule out either party winning. That's the key thing people need to know.
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zeynep tufekci Retweeted Frank
Never fails. Yeah, you got me. I don't understand probabilities.https://twitter.com/sfspaulding/status/1322979579204636677 …
zeynep tufekci added,
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As addendum, for
@insight, I wrote about why I changed my mind on this, and why I was wrong in 2012 when I defended modeling when Nate Silver was being trashed by pundits. The pundits were wrong for sure. But things did not turn out the way I had hoped.https://zeynep.substack.com/p/stop-refreshing-that-forecast …4 replies 29 retweets 163 likesShow this thread -
Example from today: Stories about polls and predictions do great among the "most read" pages. I get it. A lot is at stake. But there is just no way for forecasts to deliver what we seek, and as 2016 showed, it can even do harm if we rely on them and assume "likely" means certain.pic.twitter.com/mfhgyLATPH
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The number of comments like this—often from people who understand models and probability—really make my case. If we shouldn't be surprised with *either* outcome, that just reinforces my point. And here's why people "treat probabilities as forecasts"! https://twitter.com/liammannix/status/1323025081363099648 …pic.twitter.com/VcqWTd7dWR
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Replying to @liammannix
Thank you! I’m just pointing out that at some level, we do know that they don’t rule out either outcome, but that’s just not how they’re processed in our public sphere.
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Replying to @zeynep @liammannix
I always think if something like this was presented it would improve understanding. Even here, the prediction interval is quite tight, if you expanded to the 95% confidence bound I imagine the two estimates would mostly overlappic.twitter.com/IpAjy9qkr1
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Yep. That plus the unknown unknowns: the interval there is uncertainty that comes from things within the scope of the model. There's a good deal that isn't. Once you put that all in, it's almost certainly all in the "plausible" zone. Not even getting to voter suppression.
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