Quote on Nate Silver, and how to think about probabilities

ChrisHallquist

If Mitt Romney wins on election day, it doesn’t mean Silver’s model was wrong. After all, the model has been fluctuating between giving Romney a 25 percent and 40 percent chance of winning the election. That’s a pretty good chance! If you told me I had a 35 percent chance of winning a million dollars tomorrow, I’d be excited. And if I won the money, I wouldn’t turn around and tell you your information was wrong. I’d still have no evidence I’d ever had anything more than a 35 percent chance.

Okay, technically, winning the money would be very weak Bayesian evidence that the initial probability estimate was wrong. Still a very good quote.

From Ezra Klein:

If Mitt Romney wins on election day, it doesn’t mean Silver’s model was wrong. After all, the model has been fluctuating between giving Romney a 25 percent and 40 percent chance of winning the election. That’s a pretty good chance! If you told me I had a 35 percent chance of winning a million dollars tomorrow, I’d be excited. And if I won the money, I wouldn’t turn around and tell you your information was wrong. I’d still have no evidence I’d ever had anything more than a 35 percent chance.

Okay, technically, winning the money would be very weak Bayesian evidence that the initial probability estimate was wrong. Still a very good quote.

Okay (though to me that sounds like he has many related models that differ based on certain variables he isn't certain about... maybe that is being pointlessly pedantic) but would you agree that a R victory would be evidence that the model needs adjustment, stronger evidence than that the model was was reliable as is? If not, what if it was 99 to 1, instead of 60 to 40? Just trying to clarify my own thinking here.

I don't know much about the internals of his model, but I would say 'it depends.' I'm sure you can use his model to make predictions of the form 'given Romney victory, what should the final electoral map look like'?, etc, but I'm not sure if the public has that kind of access. Certainly questions like that can be used to probe the model after a Romney or Obama win. If either candidate wins 'in the wrong way' (i.e. carries the wrong states), its obviously stronger evidence the model is wrong than we could get from just Romney winning.

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Quote on Nate Silver, and how to think about probabilities

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Quote on Nate Silver, and how to think about probabilities

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