SGR

I like Nate Silver, I think he's a sharp guy. But Fiverthirtyeight's polls/forecast largely favored Clinton to win, like most polls did. To be clear, they gave Trump a 28.6% chance and Clinton a 71.4% chance to win on Election night.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...tion-forecast/

It could simply be that their polling/forecast methodology or samples were not as refined or accurate as they could have been, or - it could simply be that the 28.6% just happened to occur. But if you're going to hold up Fivethirtyeight's polls now as indicative of what's going to happen on Election day, or simply as reason for optimism, it may be prudent to explain why considering what their predictions were on the night of the election.

Were there problems identified in the methodology that were corrected? Factors that weren't taken to account that now are? After 2016, I simply have a difficult time putting much faith or stock in polls.

SGR

Well maybe he's not "wrong" in a strict sense, but if the outcome is far off from your original prediction, then one would be inclined to ask the statistician (Nate Silver) what was wrong with his polling methodology/forecast models/etc. that resulted in the disparity between the prediction and what happened in reality. I'm guessing Nate Silver and Fivethirtyeight have released articles about things they didn't account for in the 2016 election, but I haven't read them. And even if I had, they could just as well give you a list of other things they didn't account for when Trump wins again this November.

It's a bit like a weatherman. Okay, you get the forecasts slightly wrong a couple times a week, it's understandable - but if you get the foreceasts completely wrong - and/or you do it repeatedly, folks are not going to trust you - and assume your team of meteorologists got their degree from a cereal box.

Frownland

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

SGR

See, Frown gets it.

The Batlord

"Hey, as a proud centrist who forms all of my opinions on what right wing yokels and Wallstreet lizards will allow to happen, I take offense to that characterization."

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TheBig3

The best part of this is that suggesting Biden would be part of this show is the ultimate burn.

I gave up on American when these *******s headlined MSG.

Respectfully, I think your problem is with statistics.

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Frownland

I stan for impractical jokers. Personally my tipping point for america was more of a nonlinear undoing of American Pageant propaganda than a certain event, but the public's response to the pandemic has been the most disheartening thing to date. I guess I'd be just as pissed off if I knew as much about something like the nature of Japanese internment and Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Tokyo while watching the public platitude their way into accepting them as not only okay but necessary.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

TheBig3

I don't know how other Americans feel but it's also a real mind**** in terms of what reality is. We've politicized COVID, and I feel like I'm on the right side of history here by wearing a mask, and not calling it a hoax. And then I think "well is that just because you're a left-wing lunatic?"

What I can't wrap my head around is the 150k+ deaths continutally increasing in tandem with people claiming it's a hoax. I saw something last night that the Miami school system will only close if they have 25% of their students infected.

America has always felt like 6 countries to me. But this has really hammered it home. It continues to feel like the Southeast would rather die horribly than feel like they couldn't do something, and here in the Northeast when the government shuts down bars on St. Patricks Day we applaud.

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OccultHawk

The entire “flatten the curve” narrative was bs. When something this contagious and this dangerous strikes the only policy that makes any sense is doing what it takes to eliminate it completely. You can’t compromise with exponential growth. There was no political take, left or right, anywhere in America that wasn’t headed for herd immunity. Even the countries with the best success rates so far are still going to get creamed unless there’s a real vaccine. The whole **** during lockdown: I still need to exercise, I need to walk my dog, I need food. It doesn’t work like that. We needed a full lockdown - like you will be ****ing shot- and the national guard in hazmat suits delivering MREs and medicine and building private sanitary domiciles for every single homeless person.

When something grows exponentially the only acceptable number is zero.

I’m not known for nuance but this is a situation that calls absolutism.

Europe and Asia are setting themselves to get slapped back down, too. Even North Korea is making exceptions. This is a no exceptions situation.

Anyway, it’s too ****ing late. With these numbers we’re definitely going herd. Any other outcome is inconceivable. And that goes for entire planet, not just America.

It doesn’t matter what side you are or were on. Both sides are failures.

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Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND:

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TheBig3

So if you were in charge of dealing with this on Feb. 1 what would you have done?

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