Nate Silver Goes to War With HuffPost Writer: ‘You Have No F*cking Idea What You’re Talking About’
Nate Silver rose to prominence in 2012 when, as a writer for The New York Times, he correctly predicted the winner of the Presidential election in all 50 states.
Now with the ESPN-owned website FiveThirtyEight, Silver is slightly less certain of the election outcome this year, and slightly less certain than any other major poll aggregator of a Hillary Clinton victory. As of this writing, Silver gives Donald Trump a 35.2% chance of winning the election. The Times, by comparison, has Trump’s win probability at 14%.
And the Huffington Post gives the Republican nominee just a 2% chance of victory — which moved their Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, to write a piece criticizing Silver for “putting his thumb on the scales.”
Grim accused Silver of changing poll results to acheive a result beneficial to Trump.
“By monkeying around with the numbers like this, Silver is making a mockery of the very forecasting industry that he popularized,” Grim wrote.
He added:
I get why Silver wants to hedge. It’s not easy to sit here and tell you that Clinton has a 98 percent chance of winning. Everything inside us screams out that life is too full of uncertainty, that being so sure is just a fantasy. But that’s what the numbers say. What is the point of all the data entry, all the math, all the modeling, if when the moment of truth comes we throw our hands up and say, hey, anything can happen. If that’s how we feel, let’s scrap the entire political forecasting industry.
Silver’s guess that the race is up for grabs might be a completely reasonable assertion ― but it’s the stuff of punditry, not mathematical forecasting.
Silver responded to Grim’s piece with a fiery series of tweets.
This article is so fucking idiotic and irresponsible. https://t.co/VNp02CvxlI
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
The reason we adjust polls for the national trend is because **that’s what works best emperically**. It’s not a subjective assumption.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
It’s wrong to show Clinton with a 6-point lead (as per HuffPo) when **almost no national poll shows that**. Doesn’t reflect the data.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
Every model makes assumptions but we actually test ours based on the evidence. Some of the other models are barley even empirical.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
There are also a gajillion ways to make a model overconfident, whereas it’s pretty hard to make one overconfident.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
If you haven’t carefully tested how errors are correlated between states, for example, your model will be way overconfident.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
Not just an issue in elections models. Failure to understand how risks are correlated is part of what led to the 2007/8 financial crisis.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
There’s a reasonable range of disagreement. But a model showing Clinton at 98% or 99% is not defensible based on the empirical evidence.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
We constantly write about our assumptions and **provide evidence** for why we think they’re the right ones. https://t.co/IhLKXdxGGK
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
That's what makes a model a useful scientific & journalistic tool. It's a way to understand how elections work. Not just about the results.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
The problem is that we're doing this in a world where people—like @ryangrim—don't actually give a shit about evidence and proof.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
Grim responded:
@NateSilver538 ur trend line adjustment was certainly theoretically defensible 18 mos. ago, but you can't ignore the wild effect it has had
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 5, 2016
And Silver countered:
@ryangrim: Very professional of you not bother asking me for comment ahead of time. So unbelievably lazy.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
Wow. Forget Clinton vs. Trump. How ’bout giving us the win probabilities for Silver vs. Grim?
[image via screengrab]
UPDATE 5:48 p.m. ET — In the mood for one more round of pugilism?
First Grim, in response to Silver calling him “lazy” for not seeking comment prior to publishing his piece:
@NateSilver538 the piece links to your public reasoning. Happy to add any further explanation you want in there
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 5, 2016
Silver responded with a haymaker:
@ryangrim: The article made clear you have **no fucking idea** what you're talking about. That's why you contract people **ahead of time**.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2016
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