No matter who you are or what you do in life you're probably in touch with your number crunching abilities in some aspect of your life. You are probably very knowledgeable about some things in some certain area and can successfully predict how things will unfold better than the average person. You probably know someone else that has a number crunching expertise in some other area.
Most people that own stock in the Stock Market rely on someone else to invest their money. It would seem that the majority of people have come to terms with the idea that someone else with more knowledge and understanding in this field is more equipped to make decisions of this nature. It would seem we value the people that are better predictors of the Market to handle our money than those that have less of a track record and those that are better at it certainly are financially compensated for their abilities. Has anyone ever given you a "tip" on investing in a "sure thing"? Naturally you evaluated what you thought about their predicting ability when taking this "advice", didn't you?
A lot of people enjoy going to the race track and betting on the ponies. I've seen people attend races and bet on which horses look the best. I've seen people bet on the names of the horses. A lot of people "in the know" at the track will simply place their money on the best jockey. They understand that jockey, usually, got to choose his pick of the litter. That jockey is going to make money based on how well he finishes in the race. They understand that jockey has inside information they don't have. Other people purchase a forum, a newspaper looking thing that is loaded with tons of information about everything pertaining to each race. The forum is raw information and lots of it. The more than casual bettor likes to crunch all of the numbers in the forum and try to successfully predict the winning horse(s). Those that do it better than others are financially rewarded for their talents of crunching the numbers.
We just experienced a huge storm on the East Coast. We knew this storm was coming and what to expect because someone crunched the numbers for us. We trust them, for the most part, because we know they know what they're doing. They are taking all the raw data and interpreting it and trying to successfully predict what will happen next. Even though it all seems so over the top when we see the media handle storms, they actually do save lives by passing on the information gathered by the number crunchers prior to the storm impacting us.
People that live in earthquake zones usually know about it and pay insurance based on this reality of number crunching. Same is true for flood zones. Vegas thrives off of being able to predict the number of people that will bet equally on each side of a proposition and then they charge a small ten percent service fee for delivering this ability. Anyone that's ever walked on the Moon (I capitalize it - makes sense to me) put their lives in the hands of people that crunched a lot of numbers. So it would seem the notion of relying on others to interpret information is a valued trait in our society.
Nate Silver is a guy that crunches the numbers when it comes to elections. He gained a small level of fame back in 2008 when he very accurately predicted how all but one (tiny) state would fall in the electoral college. He drilled his predictions in The Senate that year. A couple years later he laid out the odds of the Republicans whooping ass in The House and he predicted they were quite high; he was right. This year Silver has gained even more fame because those on the right are try to delegitimize him.
Silver has kind of a geeky look about him. He claims he used to be pretty successful at internet poker (after he sold a system to Baseball Prospectus that predicted the performance levels and development of MLB players) and leveraged some of his winnings to get him into a position where he could make a living in another arena. He's willing to crunch numbers on just about anything but it's his election predictions that have gained him notoriety. He's fairly candid about his process for crunching the numbers but he purposefully withholds the special sauce that makes his Big Mac's unique. I suspect he does this because this is his livelihood and his model is valuable. And why wouldn't a person that can successfully evaluate raw data and predict the likelihood that a given event will happen next be valuable to society? In 2009 he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2010 The New York Times licensed Silver's prediction blog for publication by their paper.
Nate Silver has been crunching the numbers of this election for the last four years. He has continually listed various probabilities for many months now. The numbers have moved in different directions over the months and Obama has almost always held the lead on Silvers FiveThirtyEight Blog. But the one probability that always gets people's attention is the odds of each presidential candidate of winning. At the time I write this essay, five days before the election, Silver's site predicts Obama with a 79% chance of winning and Romney a 21% chance.
In the last two weeks I've heard all of the talking heads on the right dismiss the lamestream media and their liberal leaning polls. Rove, Morris, Limbaugh, Beck, and the entire Fox News Network have been calling foul on the polls that suggest Obama is winning. And Nate Silver has been targeted as an "ideologue" and a "joke", along with having "effeminate qualities", by those that don't like his numbers.
Do you think when the owner of a football team sees his team listed as a two touchdown underdog that he tends to agree with the line or do you think it's more likely the owner thinks his team is better than what the odds makers think? Do you think when someone shows you a picture of their baby they accurately predict the likelihood that you'll think it's as adorable as they think it is? Do you think all of the above mentioned entities that are dismissing the polls that favor Obama have an interest in the outcome of the election?
I want Nate Silver to be right because I want Nate Silver to be right. I love that we have a numbers cruncher that appears to be this good in this arena amongst us. It's information. It's difficult information to interpret. It's above most of our pay grades and we should relish the fact someone or something is capable of accurately interpreting this data. We are so grateful in so many other areas for this ability that others provide us. We seek out this information because inside knowledge, on any subject matter, is hard to obtain in life.
If Silver had the numbers switched and predicted Romney to be the favorite I would be sad. The guy I want to win would be viewed as the underdog by the guy I think is good at predicting the outcomes of elections. That wouldn't make me change my opinion of Silver. Even if Silver gets this election wrong it probably won't change my respect for his talent. He's told us all along the chance, very specifically, that he'll get it wrong. When his model starts to fail at a number outside of his predictions then I'll consider reevaluating my admiration of him. Until then I'll continue to root for him because it's good for all of us to have him around.
In a time where we get nothing but punditry about meaningless conversations, where the right and left spin everything in every direction, where we no longer agree on facts, where we lack the desire to find common ground with one another, would we not embrace this numbers cruncher? Rooting against Silver is rooting against valuable knowledge. Even if it turns out that Silver just got lucky and had a good run but he's really full a shit and was making stuff up, why would we want to root against him? What has he done wrong to this point?
In the end this has little to do with politics for me. It has everything to do with how we coexist with one another. We should all desire the best working models known to man to help guide us in our endeavors. This doesn't mean we can't disagree. It doesn't mean that you have to vote for the same guy I'm voting for. Nor does it mean some of our best known models might fail us in the future. It simply means we all have to share the desire to search out those models and embrace them when we find them. We certainly can't root against discovering them.
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