Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: The Righteous Humour, in reply to Danielle,
Vast swathes of them are perfectly all right. Really.
Indeed, a significant number are O for awesome!
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to steve black,
I wouldn't know where to begin to do a computer simulation of that.
The number of combinations of parties isn't too huge. The number that could form a government is even less. But how to work out what the chances are of one of the combinations being more likely than another is where I lose the plot. A matrix of friendliness between the parties?
Perhaps a matrix like that could be polled off the population, using the assumption that people that vote for a party are represented by the representatives, so some kind of averaging of their individual matrices of preference could represent what the representatives are likely to feel. How to assign confidence to these figures, though? Would need a lot more past data than I can presume exists.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to steve black,
This is why concerns about being "wrong N times out of so many coin tosses" get tossed out.
Which, on my understanding, is a rewording of the very definition of "X% likely". Is there a better word for what this kind of confidence used in the 538 modeling is? Or is a phrase like "92% likely" simply something that doesn't convey any clear information because the definition of %likely is not set?
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Hard News: The Righteous Humour, in reply to Richard Aston,
Hey Mr Savidge thanks for that link. Its wonderful , great to see the man off the stage, not a orator, unrehearsed but very very real , authentic and with tears of pride for those who helped.
"ripples of hope"Word, that was moving. I think that may be why Obama's Hope message is so powerful. He does actually believe it.
But even in tears, he is still an orator. It's a natural thing for him, I think, he orates as he thinks. I feel that he's just talking to me about what he really believes, when he speaks - it's seems conversational. When people are doing that, they tend to become eloquent.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I don't really have a problem with the MSM reporting it as Obama 92% to win because this is seriously complex maths and stats.
Not sure I agree with that. Reporting it as 92% likely has a meaning that anyone with higher than year 10 maths can probably understand. Which is most of the population. So you're misreporting it to them, and patronizing everyone else. If there is actually a word for what the 92% number means, it should be used. IMHO.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Using their kind of analysis it is entirely plausible that they would (almost) never be wrong.
If so, then they should not say that it's 92% likely, but whatever the likelihood actually is. Because "92% likely" means what it means. I'm not disputing they could be more accurate than that. Just that I don't see the point of saying a number that is not correct. If it's known to not be correct, why bother saying it?
ETA: I'd like to add that I'm genuinely interested in this question, Bart. You might very well be right, and understanding why would be useful to me.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
These are probably just stupid blow-hards, but a bit of historical awareness would come in handy for them.
I think so, on both counts.
Doesn't mean we should be stocking up the shelter with canned food and ammo. :)
What's the point of the shelter if it's not stocked?
@Bart
It is not necessarily true that in 8 elections where he predicts a 92% chance he will have a 50% chance of being wrong.
So no I stand by my first statment, it was a forgone conclusion.
Presuming you meant 9 rather than 8, I'm still not following you there. Yes, successive elections are not independent events, but if you've correctly worked out the probability each time, you've taken the dependence into account. Otherwise your claim of 92% likelihood is not accurate.
Perhaps I'm missing something subtle in here. What does "92% likely" actually mean, in this case? Because "foregone conclusion" to me means "100% likely".
ETA Snap Graeme.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to David Hood,
though they could be far more significant in a truly close election.
Yup, that's kind of what I was saying. Hawaii might seem powerless and disengaged because the result is often known before a lot of them get a chance to vote. But on the day that it isn't, it could be Hawaii deciding the President. The Hawaiians knowing that it's not close might disengage them, but knowing that it is close might do the exact opposite. In some ways they're actually lucky - they don't have to waste their time, unless it would matter.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to John Armstrong,
With so much media content focusing on poll results, it surely must be less likely that the electorate is well informed about policy.
I guess that depends on what is being polled. Getting poll results on why people support a view is very interesting, can highlight what the common conceptions are, and the misconceptions. It might stimulate more debate.
Put it this way - I'm always interested to hear an argument, but knowing how many people are supporting various points is not irrelevant. You can save wasting a lot of time, if the point you're trying to prove isn't what's the blocker for people agreeing with you.
I guess it depends what is meant by engagement, to some extent. Turning up to put a mark on the ballot is only part of it - participation in your democracy also involves discussing it with people around you, and the more factual information you have, the better for the discussion.
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I repeat my earlier point that foregrounding how people are likely to vote in political coverage, ahead of analysis of policies can't be a good thing, regardless of whether those polls are accurate or not. Can it?
Not sure about this one. There are electoral systems in the world where people actually physically line up behind the candidates, and they can see where everyone is. This seems crazy to us, but it does seem to work out OK. I guess it's kind of like taking a high power of a Markov chain - if there's an equilibrium it can be found that way. When there's only a few steps of information people can switch choices back and forwards and it's got much more of a musical chairs aspect to it. When you actually know which way it's all going, then there's no point trying to game it, vote tactically, etc. You know all the info about how everyone's going to vote, and you make your choice based on that.
Put it this way, at least this way, no one gets a big surprise about how things panned out, and wishes they voted differently to support an outcome that they could have influenced if only they'd known. Everything is known, and you pick where you feel most comfortable. That's democracy in action too.
But I said I wasn't sure, and I'm still not, because it is possible that there is no equilibrium state and the outcomes will wildly fluctuate around, depending on the information given, and this could put huge unaccountable power into the hands of pollsters.
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