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  Nate Silver becomes the Joe Morgan of Politics
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ContributorScott³ 
Last EditedScott³  Sep 29, 2009 12:06am
Logged 1 [Older]
CategoryBlog Entry
AuthorNeil Stevens
News DateMonday, September 28, 2009 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0
Description"Nate Silver once was a respected mathematical analyst. His baseball-related work, such as that at Baseball Prospectus and on PECOTA, showed that he has the ability to make solid, reasoned arguments using mathematical tools.

But now, he’s flushed his own reputation into the toilet with his campaign against Strategic Vision. The pretend math, and lack of serious analysis and justification, in his series of posts against the company is so bad, I expect him any day now to start ranting about how he hasn’t seen a given poll, but he still thinks that Obama has the consistency to pull it out just like the Reds used to. Nate Silver has become the Joe Morgan of politics.


The plain truth is, much like a Joe Morgan broadcast, the Nate Silver articles leave one knowing nothing he didn’t know to begin with. Take the original piece. Here, Silver’s analysis boils down to this:

1.Manufacture two sets of data using a methodology with no justification given. Why strip out everything but Democrats and Republicans? Either the polls are doctored or they aren’t.
2.Make pretty pictures.
3.Eyeball the pictures.
4.Scream that they aren’t consistent enough, not like his old Reds teams, so they must be FRAUDS!
He attempts to provide a thin veneer of justification for his work by citing Benford’s Law. However that’s completely ridiculous, as Benford’s Law applies to a) early digits of numbers in data sets spanning b) many orders of magnitude c) smoothly. Silver’s work covers a) last digits of numbers in data sets spanning b) a range of about 30-60 c) bunched together around 50 because polls are more likely to be taken in close races. Even mentioning Benford’s Law in this context by most people would show a fundamental lack of understanding, much like Joe Morgan and other analysts when they use Wins to praise pitchers and RBIs to praise batters.

However Nate Silver knows better. He’s not the Joe Morgan of politics."
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