The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Thoughts?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/professor-doubles-down-on-prediction-model-showing-trump-having-91-percent-chance-of-winning-election-despite-polls

Interesting, but reductionist and also raises some questions: What about a situation where one primary has 17 or 18 candidates and the other has one incumbent?  With the second primaries being in a red state, does it really matter how well Biden did? 

Bottom line: These predictive models are interesting and fun to look at, but should be taken with a lot of of salt.

 

Quote from: nebo113 on Today at 06:13:50 AM

Thoughts?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/professor-doubles-down-on-prediction-model-showing-trump-having-91-percent-chance-of-winning-election-despite-polls

I'm always awake to the possibility that I am just dumb.  But I have never understood these percentage-based predictions.  Trump has a 91% chance of winning?  Not a 90% chance?  Not a 92% chance?  Since a model like that is not testable after the fact (even if Trump wins, how do we know that he had a 91% chance of winning?), it's not clear to me how the model's veracity can ever be proven.

Completely agree, but I'll take it a step further. The veracity CAN'T be proven. The pollsters who make such claims are the political equivalents of Jean Dixon.

Either leftover roast and potatoes, or green salad wrapped in corn tortillas with hummus.  Depends on my mood when I get home.

Of course, your reasons for being skeptical of a vaccine are valid, for everyone else it is about their irrational beliefs?
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I haven't noticed you demonstating any humility about the chances that you are wrong about anything. If you want to descend into snark, well, that's your choice.
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I might be wrong about all sorts of things, which is why I prefer to outsource my decisions on vaccines to people who have expertise. I actually think there's something pretty unpleasant about telling us you wouldn't get a hypothetical vaccine, the larger public health be damned, but other people who don't trust experts are a bunch of deluded rubes causing a crisis.

Perhaps the recent surge in the number of new Caronavirus cases in many areas of the U.S. has awakened or reawakened sanitation concerns, putting store ordering, shipping, and manufacturing beind again? Ask a clerk/stocker when new shipments are expected. Their "hand held" technologies allow them to research such. I tried a "store to store", 30 mile search for Lysol spray disinfectant last week [different than cleaner].