Wednesday, November 7, 2012

How Close was Nate Silver?

Nate Silver's prediction is on top, actual results below:
Florida has not declared yet but will go for Obama (blue)
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10 comments:

  1. BillNovember 7, 2012 at 2:13 PM

    Nate is one smart guy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DiugoNovember 7, 2012 at 2:47 PM

    Umm, the implication is that both maps are the same, ie Nate's prediction was dead on. Then why does your pic from yesterday show Nate giving only 313 votes to Obama? The answer is, Nate really thought Florida would go to Romney. So why does Nate's map show Florida as blue???

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  3. DiugoNovember 7, 2012 at 2:52 PM

    Umm, the implication is that both maps are the same, ie Nate's prediction was dead on. Then why does your pic from yesterday show Nate giving only 313 votes to Obama? The answer is, Nate really thought Florida would go to Romney. So why does Nate's map show Florida as blue???

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  4. DiugoNovember 7, 2012 at 3:00 PM

    Correction, the original 313 figure suggested Nate actually thought that both Florida and Wisconsin (Ryan's home state) would go to Romney. So his prediction was really not that accurate.

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    Replies
    1. CroftNovember 7, 2012 at 4:19 PM

      On Nate's page http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/ he shows FL as a "tossup" with 49.8% of the vote share to each candidate. He was adjusting his prediction all the time as new polls came in. He is basically a number cruncher. He has a pretty good record of accuracy though.

      Delete
  5. RickNovember 7, 2012 at 3:39 PM

    Nate Silver's final projection for the election showed both Florida and Wisconsin going for Obama. Florida was a late flip the day prior to the election.

    He is an amazingly accurate guy. I sure wouldn't want to bet against him.

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  6. René and Jeanette GenereuxNovember 7, 2012 at 5:45 PM

    I would agree that Nate Silver's projections were spot on! That guy studies well and his arrhythmic is close to perfect.

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  7. DiugoNovember 7, 2012 at 8:48 PM

    Sorry, I should have done more research before posting, to determine why the "spot on" map didn't jive with his 313 prediction. Turns out the 313 was the average of several simulations. It's really all croft's fault---if only he had posted the map yesterday, instead of the graph :) :)

    By correctly predicting the results of the ten tossup states, Nate did the equivalent of predicting ten coin tosses in a row---a less than 1 in 1000 probability. An amazing feat indeed.

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    Replies
    1. CroftNovember 7, 2012 at 10:02 PM

      Sorry Diugo, Blogger sent this comment to Spam. I got an email notification and finally realized it had not posted.

      Delete
  8. AnonymousJanuary 27, 2019 at 2:01 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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