Nate Silver will make one firm prediction about the midterms. Most journalists won't want to hear it

[Hassin Bin Sober]

https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Nate-Silver-will-make-one-firm-prediction-about-13311022.php

Nate Silver will make one firm prediction about the midterms. Most journalists won’t want to hear it.


After the roller-coaster ride of 2016’s election night, have journalists and political junkies learned not to let conventional wisdom substitute for hard knowledge?

Nate Silver — the closest thing there is to a celebrity in the arcane field of statistical journalism — is not wildly optimistic about that.

“Media understanding about probability, margin of error and uncertainty is very poor,” Silver said Monday afternoon when I stopped by the Manhattan office of his FiveThirtyEight.com for a pre-election chat.

“That led them to be more surprised than they should have been,” he said, based on the quite accurate polling numbers that were available.

[Awsi Dooger]

1. "Media understanding about probability, margin of error and uncertainty is very poor"

Hardly confined to the media. I use those terms all the time on various websites because they are so crucial yet not well understood or applied.

And that's why it was not particularly difficult to fare well in the Las Vegas sports betting scene. There were some nutcases in that setting but also some extremely sharp people who did understand those variables. We shared theories and notes and opportunities to shift the small house advantage to our favor. Granted, it was much more available when there were 40+ sportsbooks with isolated odds, as opposed to nowadays with corporate mergers and satellites and one blended line after another. You actually have to pick winners these days. What a rip off.

BTW, 538 is up to 84.6% chance of Democrats retaking the House. I'd report it's the highest I've seen other than that's not technically correct...it was 84.7% earlier today.

Trend has been very positive lately.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/