I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

Doping might account for recent Romney gains.

Taking Sides: Mitt Romney or Curtis Granderson

If Silver moves to 80/20, then we're into Mario Mendoza/Adam Dunn territory, and yes, it's a shock when those guys get a hit.

oh good – baseball talk!

Yeah except even great hitters only get a hit 30-35% of the time so really that's not a good comparison.

Flawed, agreed. Let's not agitate Alfred any further.

I like thinkign about romney's VORP

baseball averages aren't exactly the same thing as probabilities either

They vary from year to year--.280 one year, .310 the next--so they're different that way, but as a snapshot, aren't they the same? If a .250 hitter steps to the plate after a large enough sample of at-bats, doesn't he have a 1 in 4 chance of getting a hit?

2 possible ways to visualize/make intuitive a 70% chance of winning

-> if there were an election every day for ten days, w/ the result every day independent of that of the previous day obama would win 7 days, and romney 3
-> on election day, God rolls a 10-sided die (7 sides obama, 3 sides romney)

Same thing. If Romney wins 3 out of every 10 days, a win on any one day wouldn't be shocking.

i love that this has taken a baseball turn now.

no, a .250 average doesn't mean that a player has a 1 in 4 chance of getting a hit, because walks don't count toward it, sacrifice flies don't, etc

I like to think of it as 10 parallel scifi universes, stuff happens that makes romney win 3 of them

i prefer to think of it as Romney has a 70% chance of losing

that's not a bad way of putting it (xpost)

we will figure out which one of those scifi universes we live in soon, but there are currently some unknowns like things that will happen over the week, the gotv, base motivation, maybe there were some polling biases - if we already knew all those things right now we would know which scifi universe we live in, but if you consider what we do know it's more likely that we live in one of those 7 than one of the other 3

Obama is like The Artist, and Romney is Hugo.

Okay--1 in 4 on a ball that's either a hit or out. Less if you count all possible outcomes. Anyway, my main point is that if it's a 75% chance of Obama winning, a Romney win would be somewhat surprising but not even close to shocking.

ftr i understand statistics but a romney win would shock me to the core

i'm fuzzy on this but iirc all models hope to approximate true randomness (the die thing), that's the only time where statistics work, and its still a ratio in aggregate, how close baseball averages or nate silver get to true randomness is a question for statistics. xposts

actually silvers model is prob based on simulations (the 10 days thing)

-> on election day, God rolls a 10-sided die (7 sides obama, 3 sides romney)
― flopson

If we're gonna go the AD&D route, we have to consider modifiers. Does God have to roll a Sandy response check and add a +1 incumbent mod?

yeah silver runs like 100,000 simulations for his numbers

http://www.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1178383!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_370/image.jpg

ftr i understand statistics but a romney win would shock me to the core

Probably because you've seen Mitt Romney speaking, and thinking, and laughing, and doing other Mitt Romney things. The numbers can never adequately contain his Mitt Romneyness.

xp LOL at Obama being drawn w/ classic evil cartoon eyes.

tbh i think sandy is going to give obes even more of a poll boost in key states before tuesday.

OBES

http://www.zillow.com/blog/files/2011/12/Lagasse_Photo.jpg

http://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gifBREAKINGhttp://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gif

http://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gifNATE SILVER CHERRY-PICKING DATA, SAYS, "YES, I AM DELIBERATELY CHERRY-PICKING"http://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gif

http://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gifhttp://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gifhttp://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gif

8th paragraph down

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/oct-30-what-state-polls-suggest-about-the-national-popular-vote/?hp

of course i'm totally being a facetious smartass but still he might not want to use those words when the barbarians are at the gate

Do I cherry-pick myself?
Very well; I cherry-pick myself

is it really that hard to understand what "70% chance of winning" means? do we as adults really need (flawed) baseball and d&d comparisons to make this more intuitive?

it's actually not intuitive at all! people don't naturally think in probabilities

BREAKING

NATE SILVER SAYS IT CERTAINLY COULD TURN OUT TO BE THE CASE THAT THE STATE POLLS ARE SYSTEMATICALLY BIASED AGAINST ROMNEY

http://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gifWOO WOOO WOO WOO WOO WOO - WOOOooooooOOOooooooOOOOoooo - WOOWOOWOOWOOOWOOWOOhttp://cdn.dealbreaker.com/uploads/2011/05/drudge-siren.gif

But perhaps national polls tell the right story of the race instead — meaning that the state polls systematically overrate Mr. Obama’s standing?

It’s certainly possible. (It keeps me up late at night.)

NATE SILVER'S BAMBOOZLING OF DATA KEEPS HIM UP LATE AT NIGHT FILM AT 11

I hope Shakey will join me in dancing on Drudge's grave when the inevitable aneurism finally claims him

NATE SILVER'S VOICE IS HIGH AND HIS ARMS ARE SKINNY

WOOWOOWOOOWOOOWOO-WoooooOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOoWOOWOOWOOWOOOWOO

i'm assuming you all make the same sound effect when you see the drudge sirens

can we really trust a gay man's statistics in a straight man's world?

at this point the only drama nate can generate is drama over the validity of his figures. it's in the interest of his page views to say things like "i cherry pick data come at me mouth breathers"

do we as adults really need (flawed) ... d&d comparisons

fyi my dice comparison was not flawed maybe *you* need to brush up on your probabilities

he's talking about cherry-picking the examples for that one blog post, not the data for his model

"(flawed)" was only intended to modify the baseball part of the sentence, it was poorly phrased and i apologize

This should be renamed to the Nate Silver thread.

he casts a shadow like pitchfork on ilm threads

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/a-bayesian-take-on-julian-assange/ seems legit

haha someone linked to that the other day. wtf nate.

OBAMANIA: THE GATHERING

i.e. man this thread got weird