"Forecasting is hard, especially about the future." [Yogi Berra]
There are two things dancing around in my coconut tonight. So, instead of 365 thoughts, we can extrapolate to 730 for the year...Hmmm.
That's the kind of thinking that can get you into trouble, especially if you are trying to forecast income and expenses or votes to be garnered if you're running for president.
One of the thoughts that is nagging me is the behavior of people who deny mathematical reality. They remind me of the Bishop in Galileo Galilei's life. I am not a mathematician, but when I am confronted with the results of a mathematical formula, I pretty much give them my assent. I have a hard time wondering why people still cling to anecdotes rather than mathematics. I muse over the conduct of those who prefer their "gut" to the result of a computer-generated result. Especially one that is the result of a machine churning on the input of a proven professional. That's why I can't imagine that anyone would actually question the results that come out of Nate Silver's machine. His machine does not make mistakes because he feeds it the correct numbers and it obeys the road signs that he has devised and fed into it. Pure numbers without emotion and clean of prejudice. Before you know it, the answer is the future in the palm of your hand...or the apple of your eye, if you prefer. It is amazing. It is difficult to comprehend. It seems impossible the first time that you see it. If you think about it a little bit, all it is, is pure mathematics. The machine is unencumbered by prejudicial thinking or emotion. All it does is to churn in order of "go/no-go." In a short while, the present enduring facts become the future facts. All you have to do is so sit back and watch it unfold before your very eyes.
The lesson I derive from that is that truth leads to truth.
I mention this because Nate Silver has found a logarithm that allows him to forecast the outcome of elections. This is a very challenging thing to accept on the purely human level. It is happening and it cannot be denied. In fact, without directly engaging the services of the computer nerd, Mr. Silver, the campaign managers of Mr. Obama's run for the presidency used mathematical models in their approach to the campaign effort of 2012. They derived their mathematical models from a large pool of polls and rather than to trust the result of some of their favorite ones, they only trusted the matematical results of the average of all of them for everything that they did.
That is why the Obama campaign was very disciplined and applied the combination of personal pressure of human "stumping" and television ads only to the locations where the computerized results told them to go. The Obama campaign began putting their source information together very early [at the very outset of the Republican primaries] and they never swayed away from the formula that they had constructed. I have been disgusted about the lack of loving humanity that guided them in their process. They were totally dedicated to the scientific model that they had built. It was all a matter of statistics and probability. Like this:
1. White adult non-working males over 65
2. White adult working males between 40 and 64
3. White adult working women between 24 and 35, etc., etc...
That's just a small sample. They had the population of the United States sliced and diced in perhaps 20 different elemental groups. They targeted these sociological groups with laser precision and only in the locations where they were greatest in number and where the Electoral College was the richest. You know, the "swing states." They did not go to Massachusetts, for example. That was easy. Even though Romney had been the governor of Massachusetts, he was behind in the polls by about 25%. Same was true of California. Romney had never been governor here, but he could not come close to winning here. He knew it so he didn't waste his time coming here...Neither did Obama.
So, tell me, Virginia, how does it feel to be one of Santa's little statistics?
Not that great, right? But that is the way it is in the twenty-first century. Human beings have gone from being flesh and blood to being mathematical abstractions. Almost. We still have to vote. That is why there is an army of volunteers knocking on doors, calling on the telephone, sending out emails, copying flyers to be delivered by the postal service, standing in front of stores in the mall with flyers and pictures of the candidates not to speak of countless, mindlessly untrue television ads. The volunteers do not even have to suggest that you vote for candidate "X" because the only list that they have is the one the computer generated. It contains the names of those that it has calculated will vote for the candidate for whom the volunteer is working.
In the end, all this frenetic human activity can still be calculated and the results be accurate almost to the fourth decimal place. Believe it.
By the way, have you heard that white males are in the minority in the United States? It's true.
There are two things dancing around in my coconut tonight. So, instead of 365 thoughts, we can extrapolate to 730 for the year...Hmmm.
That's the kind of thinking that can get you into trouble, especially if you are trying to forecast income and expenses or votes to be garnered if you're running for president.
One of the thoughts that is nagging me is the behavior of people who deny mathematical reality. They remind me of the Bishop in Galileo Galilei's life. I am not a mathematician, but when I am confronted with the results of a mathematical formula, I pretty much give them my assent. I have a hard time wondering why people still cling to anecdotes rather than mathematics. I muse over the conduct of those who prefer their "gut" to the result of a computer-generated result. Especially one that is the result of a machine churning on the input of a proven professional. That's why I can't imagine that anyone would actually question the results that come out of Nate Silver's machine. His machine does not make mistakes because he feeds it the correct numbers and it obeys the road signs that he has devised and fed into it. Pure numbers without emotion and clean of prejudice. Before you know it, the answer is the future in the palm of your hand...or the apple of your eye, if you prefer. It is amazing. It is difficult to comprehend. It seems impossible the first time that you see it. If you think about it a little bit, all it is, is pure mathematics. The machine is unencumbered by prejudicial thinking or emotion. All it does is to churn in order of "go/no-go." In a short while, the present enduring facts become the future facts. All you have to do is so sit back and watch it unfold before your very eyes.
The lesson I derive from that is that truth leads to truth.
I mention this because Nate Silver has found a logarithm that allows him to forecast the outcome of elections. This is a very challenging thing to accept on the purely human level. It is happening and it cannot be denied. In fact, without directly engaging the services of the computer nerd, Mr. Silver, the campaign managers of Mr. Obama's run for the presidency used mathematical models in their approach to the campaign effort of 2012. They derived their mathematical models from a large pool of polls and rather than to trust the result of some of their favorite ones, they only trusted the matematical results of the average of all of them for everything that they did.
That is why the Obama campaign was very disciplined and applied the combination of personal pressure of human "stumping" and television ads only to the locations where the computerized results told them to go. The Obama campaign began putting their source information together very early [at the very outset of the Republican primaries] and they never swayed away from the formula that they had constructed. I have been disgusted about the lack of loving humanity that guided them in their process. They were totally dedicated to the scientific model that they had built. It was all a matter of statistics and probability. Like this:
1. White adult non-working males over 65
2. White adult working males between 40 and 64
3. White adult working women between 24 and 35, etc., etc...
That's just a small sample. They had the population of the United States sliced and diced in perhaps 20 different elemental groups. They targeted these sociological groups with laser precision and only in the locations where they were greatest in number and where the Electoral College was the richest. You know, the "swing states." They did not go to Massachusetts, for example. That was easy. Even though Romney had been the governor of Massachusetts, he was behind in the polls by about 25%. Same was true of California. Romney had never been governor here, but he could not come close to winning here. He knew it so he didn't waste his time coming here...Neither did Obama.
So, tell me, Virginia, how does it feel to be one of Santa's little statistics?
Not that great, right? But that is the way it is in the twenty-first century. Human beings have gone from being flesh and blood to being mathematical abstractions. Almost. We still have to vote. That is why there is an army of volunteers knocking on doors, calling on the telephone, sending out emails, copying flyers to be delivered by the postal service, standing in front of stores in the mall with flyers and pictures of the candidates not to speak of countless, mindlessly untrue television ads. The volunteers do not even have to suggest that you vote for candidate "X" because the only list that they have is the one the computer generated. It contains the names of those that it has calculated will vote for the candidate for whom the volunteer is working.
In the end, all this frenetic human activity can still be calculated and the results be accurate almost to the fourth decimal place. Believe it.
By the way, have you heard that white males are in the minority in the United States? It's true.
No comments:
Post a Comment