Do you trust FiveThirtyEight without Nate Silver?
nymag.com
Article from a few weeks ago, but now that G. Elliott Morris is taking over without Nate's models, I'm curious what lemmy's think about political polling analysis from FiveThirtyEight?
Article from a few weeks ago, but now that G. Elliott Morris is taking over without Nate's models, I'm curious what lemmy's think about political polling analysis from FiveThirtyEight?
I didn't trust Nate Silver anyhow. Maybe it'll be an improvement?
Why did you not trust him? A history of invalid models, or personality?
My trust in him dropped after being exposed to his activity on twitter. It seemed like he had a habit of trying to apply his knowledge to things he didn't understand or where he was missing the point. I'm no longer on twitter and can't remember specific examples, so it may have been more that that format did not work for him.
I remember him having some weird COVID takes. Statistically we should just get out there because only a few of us would die. He seemed to think it was odd that people were staying in for no reason. That completely missed the point that if your family is the statistic, it just fucks your whole life up.
Heh, I remember thinking, statistically, he's probably not wrong for a population but that completely missed the prisoner's dilemma of making sure you're not the statistic.
Agree! This describes my experience exactly. On a related note about format, I thought Jody Avirgan, Five Thirty Eight's podcast producer early on, was a good foil for him, drawing him into conversation and occasionally pushing back on points that sounded wild or tone deaf.
Morris has also built robust polling analysis models, so it will be interesting to see how (or if) his models manifest themselves on 538.
As to Nate, he can well and truly go fuck himself. His arrogance is staggering, as demonstrated by his behavior at the onset of COVID in early 2020. He seemed to argue with every epidemiologist that crossed his path early in the pandemic, simply because he believed HE knew better about the impacts of a global pandemic than they did. Because as we all know, being a statistical analysis guru makes you an expert in epidemiology (yes, I'm being sarcastic).
The dude is so far up his own ass that the only way he can see outside is through his belly button.