Not only was Silver subjected to criticism from people who didn't like his forecast, he had to deal with some very nasty personal attacks too. He must be feeling pretty good this morning.
This is the big night for Silver, and for analytics in general.
Silver himself pointed out on Twitter this week that just because he's forecasting a 90% likelihood of victory for Obama doesn't mean he's forecasting a landslide. Quite the opposite: He's forecasting Obama most likely to win by a narrow margin.
This must be about the last forecast from Silver before the polls close. He's now showing Obama with a more than 90% choice of winning. Romney, thus 10-1 against, which are tough odds to overcome.
Stats don't come naturally to people. Imagine Romney winning, and Silver saying "There you are, I told you so." That would be a head-scratcher for most people, but consistent - as you say - with his data.
Joe - But people who don't understand math will need more clear-cut results. They'll fixate on the big prediction and not look at all the other forecasts Silver has made.
Another way of explaining what Silver does: If the weather forecaster says there's a 75% chance of snow tomorrow, he's not wrong if it doesn't snow. The key is -- how accurate are his predictions over time?
Silver will certainly need to explain what happened if Romney wins, but yes, Silver hasn't ruled it out. It's just appeared highly unlikely for a very long time.
Meanwhile, nice little piece on Silver at TPM. Interesting to see that he retains rights, essentially, to the 538 blog, and is really just "leasing" his brand to the Times.
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Businesses often struggle to decide which domain to use. When it comes to purchasing a domain name, you have plenty of extensions to choose from, ranging from .com and .net, to .me, and even .mobi. But which one should you pick?
I've been writing about how the next evolution of the Internet might just be an advertising revolution, and how corporate IT can stay involved as the enablers and providers of the technologies that make this possible.
In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M.
The smartphone market reached a significant milestone, a breakthrough that may cause vendors to celebrate but could strain the capabilities of IT service desks.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
