Nate Silver To Leave FiveThirtyEight (hollywoodreporter.com) 70
Thelasko writes: Renowned data journalist, Nate Silver, announced he will be leaving the company as soon as his contract expires. Although Disney owns the FiveThirtyEight brand, it is believed that Silver retains ownership of the site's algorithms. "ABC News remains dedicated to data journalism with a core focus on politics, the economy and enterprise reporting -- this streamlined structure will allow us to be more closely aligned with our priorities for the 2024 election and beyond," an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement. "We are grateful for the invaluable contributions of the team members who will be departing the organization and know they will continue to make an important impact on the future of journalism."
Interesting (Score:1)
528's graphs were essential in tracking the 2020 election, resulting in that infamous meme of the blue spike. Curiously, it seems their coverage turned to shit after that controversy, and never again did I see them publish a graph of counted votes over time, though I looked in the midterms.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The midterms did not have the problems and complaints the 2020 had. The problem was not 528's coverage, but that the midterm was far more boring.
Nate Silver is a hard line mathematician. He looks at the numbers. When people are lying about the numbers, he is very interesting proving them wrong. When the lies get boring, so does he.
I hope that wherever he lands, he continues to put out good data analysis. I suspect that in the next presidential election, it will get very interesting again. Unless Trump goes to jail before then, and all we get is Biden Vs. Trump-lite.
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The graphs mostly preceded the controversy and then became concurrent with it, and were used to help generate controversy in hindsight
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If you have some evidence that hasn't gone before a court, they'd love to see it because the last thing they're interested in is the will of the voters.
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Are you desperate to debate this or something? Or are you replying to the wrong comment?
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infamous meme of the blue spike
Never heard of it. Got a link?
OP looks at live through Dump-tinted glasses... (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why he remembers as both "infamous" and a "meme" what was just one in the series of Dumpeacho's attempts at spreading FUD and disinformation - and flagged as "false news and misinformation" and debunked almost immediately. [politifact.com]
Sad.
You know... The "grown person talking about past events as memes" kind of sad. Depressing AND repulsive.
Makes you think about washing your hands or taking a shower kind of sad.
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"S-s-stop talking about memes as if they're memes! I-it's gross for you to even mention it!"
Yes, it was a meme, Photoshopped all over the place. Joe Biden vaulting over Trump with a blue line trailing behind him, spiking at the pole line, Jeb taking over the spike, etc.
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"S-s-stop talking about memes as if they're memes! I-it's gross for you to even mention it!"
Yes, it was a meme, Photoshopped all over the place. Joe Biden vaulting over Trump with a blue line trailing behind him, spiking at the pole line, Jeb taking over the spike, etc.
Also funny that your article doesn't even show it.
Re:OP looks at live through Dump-tinted glasses... (Score:4, Informative)
There's always a spike in vote totals when the polls close because that's when absentee/mail-in ballots get added to the totals all at once. In 2020 that spike was much larger than usual due to the much higher number of those ballots and they heavily favored Biden due to the demographics of those who voted absentee/mail-in.
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"Most of the fraud will be solved" lol.
Fuck off conspiratrumpbot. I piss in your face and will take joy at your weeping and wailing when Biden is re-elected next year.
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Where did I mention any conspiracy? If the nominees are Biden and Trump then Biden will undoubtedly win.
None of that has anything to do with the integrity of elections and ensuring ballots are authentically cast though. That shouldn't even be a debate much less a partisan issue yet here we are.
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You showed yourself with the buzzwords and in person with ID nonsense.
Among scholars and actual policy wonks there is no "debate". The amount of fraud in U.S. elections is a non-factor. Voter ID its self is not designed to solve any issue relating to people voting in the name of another because that problem doesn't exist in quantifiable numbers either. The logistics of such a thing alone make it a high labor low reward operation.
It's no coincidence that the push for voter ID started in southern red state
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If there's no fraud then what's the problem with making sure ballots are cast by the people whose names are on them? It's not hard. Every other country that holds elections does it. What's wrong with having the same voting standards we insist every emerging democracy has when we monitor their elections for them?
Well, there is a cost. Putting armed game wardens on every street corner would ensure people are safe from alligators in our cities. Why don't we do that?
Most other countries (ie The UK, Canada, Australia) have ID requirements that are akin to showing a utility bill to confirm address.
Thu USA does not have a voter fraud problem, but it does have a voter turnout problem. Draconian voter ID laws tend to suppress voter turnout, and that suppression disproportionaly impacts lower income voters.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, people who's party is favoured by those negatively impacted by specific voting requirements are generally against them, and those who's party is disfavoured by these requirements are generally supportive of the requirements. However, anyone in favour of efficient use of resources to address actual problems would not be a strong supporter.
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"Most of the fraud will be solved" lol.
Fuck off conspiratrumpbot. I piss in your face and will take joy at your weeping and wailing when Biden is re-elected next year.
Close to four years out of office and he STILL lives rent-free in your head.
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Close to four years out and people are still claiming fraud. You'd know this if you read the parent.
Re:OP looks at live through Dump-tinted glasses... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's always a spike in vote totals when the polls close because that's when absentee/mail-in ballots get added to the totals all at once. In 2020 that spike was much larger than usual due to the much higher number of those ballots and they heavily favored Biden due to the demographics of those who voted absentee/mail-in.
Just a question, have you been monitoring the changes being made to election laws all across the USA since the 2020 election? A lot of hole patching going on around the country. Maybe our election laws weren't so rock solid as we were led to believe and now we're going to see much more realistic results.
A lot of democrats voted absentee because of 'Republican electoral hole patching going on around the country' that was intended to keep them from voting in person. Biden then got a vote spike when those votes were added to the totals. Cause -> Effect. What's really ironic here is tha if Republicans crack down on absentee voting in a big way they'll be shooting themselves in the foot because a very disproportional number of their own voter-base in red rural states votes by mail.
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I think the biggest loophole though is the
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Having more than a google result of knowledge on the topic (before 2020 conspiracies - literally decades before) I know the system and some of it's history. STATES ALL DIFFER.
2020 was the most secure; it wasn't just an overstatement from a famous security expert and republican who was in charge of improving it. (his mistake, he didn't realize he was supposed to rig it or undermine it so he was fired.)
In my state it's not advertised, but we have ballots with tracking data on them. You can't stuff any ballo
Re:OP looks at live through Dump-tinted glasses... (Score:5, Informative)
Pennsylvania republicans and the 2020 election is a huge facepalm. Here's the breakdown:
In 2019 the republican controlled legislature approved voting by mail. https://www.legis.state.pa.us/... [state.pa.us]
2020 rolls around with covid and now all of the state can vote by mail.
Trump loses and republicans go to court over voting by mail. The judge asks why they're suddenly not happy with a law THEY passed back in 2019 and dismisses the case. Two years later and they're still fighting. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/n... [pbs.org]
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Great? Doesn't change the fact that it was a meme
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I don't remember that meme. Maybe because I unsubbed from all the default subreddits, I'm not connected to the hive-mind anymore.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
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I didn't mention anything about his analysis whatsoever. Did you not read my comment? I said his graphs were essential and then after the controversy I haven't seen anything like that since.
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Re: Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, Nate Silver made his name in 2008 when his web site gave the public a fairly accurate depiction of what the outcome of the Obama / Romney election was going to be. The way he presented his information was fairly simple and easy to understand, and he gained notoriety in the press when his predictions ended up coming true, which was not a particularly difficult thing to do, to be honest. He was hailed as some kind of predictive mathematical genius, but in actuality, the election was not that close a
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correction: Obama / McCain - it's late and typing on my phone and remembering things is hard to juggle.
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Fast forward to 2016. Nate Silverâ(TM)s brand has essentially become a mouthpiece of the Democrat party.
You say he presents the data simply and openly, how can you become political by presenting data?
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When 1 group is out of touch with reality they have to me make reality their enemy.
Long term, it doesn't turn out well for them or their eventual victims and sadly, delusions can last a whole lifetime.
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The incompetent MEDIA (I'm being nice) benefits greatly by excusing competence as rare genius. Their praise is really smokescreen for themselves. Have you ever experienced this yourself? It gets easy to spot if you have.
No, Nate did well in 2016 too.
Many people seem to think that siding with Democrats reflects on them "changing" when it reality is the Republicans have gone delusional and then went to extremes (lacking any grounding) thereby alienating anybody still grounded in any of the following:
truth,
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The funny thing Nate Silver was one of the very few people who realized that the polling data leading up to the election was off in 2016 and that Trump voters were being underrepresented. He adjusted his models - I suppose to you that's "making up numbers", but he ended up predicting Trump could win. He didn't say that was the most likely outcome, but he gave Trump about 30% odds. It was all the Nate Silver/538 copycat sites that were saying things like 99.9+% Hilary that were arguably just wrong.
I will
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Nate Silver was instrumental in swinging the election for Trump by undoing the left's psychological voter suppression via bad polls. Whereas everyone held Clinton at 90%+ (NYT 92%, HuffPo 98%), Nate alone began "reweighting" the polls to allow for a more accurate forecast and dropped Clinton's chances from 90% to 65% in the final few weeks, raising Trump's chances from 10% to 35%. This had a huge impact as 538 was considered the most accurage and was the most quoted in the news, on MSNBC sometimes as often
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Piss off, moron. Unless your goal is to show everyone what really goes on in the mind of the radical left, in which case, carry on.
Re:Mining Data (Score:5, Informative)
My impression is that Nate Silver is very good at mining datasets to support his pre-conceived conclusions and explaining why even when he is wrong he wasn't really wrong.
A lot of people struggle with understanding statistical aspect of Nate Silver's work. if he projects '80% chance X will beat Y' they think that means he is saying Y is cooked and X will win handily. But that is not how it works. The projection means that if X ran against Y in 50 elections with similar pre-election polling data in each case, your may expect X would win ~40 of those and Y would win ~10. When we find ourselves in one of those 10 out of 50 cases where Y wins that Nate Silver says should exist, people always emerge to gloat about it.
His actual methodology calls for including all polling information. And he will post results even that go strongly against his personal intuition (in which case he speculates on why, but still gives the data as collected). You also find that him at odds with both right and left narratives - which is what you expect from someone following the data rather than trying to support a particular agenda.
I don't doubt that mistakes and bias exist in his work, as I would expect for anyone, but all the general evidence points to him as a well-meaning and overall fairly accurate contributor to the analysis of some important statistical questions.
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oh ok, so im just stupid then? thanks man, i had no idea what statistics were.
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People in general don't intuitively understand probabilities. We all fundamentally have the "look, there's a lion in the grass, run" instinct, rather than the "there's a 76% probability there's a lion in the grass" one.
To a pundit, of course, there's only "he was wrong" and "he got lucky."
538 (Score:2)
Disney owns the 538 brand?
I thought that you couldn't trademark a number.
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Has anyone ever challenged it?
Unlikely it would survive.
Re: 538 (Score:2)
Yes you can trademark a number.
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That's not the same as "538". If they went for "57" I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fly.
My legal background is more heavily in patent law than trademark but I'm about 80% sure a raw number wouldn't survive a challenge.
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Who did what? (Score:1)
I guess I will take Slashdot's word for it that this is tech news, but none of the buzzwords were exiting enough to make me want to follow the links.
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So without following the links the Slashdot post reads as: "An unknown person leaves and unnamed company that may be Disney or ABC News. ABC news will continue to do meaningless buzzwords stuff, as will the staff".
I would take the fact that the individual has been covered on here, albeit briefly throughout, for about a decade and a half (maybe even more) to indicate that there need not be more precision in the description than linking to /. coverage of him...
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Since you seem to think I should have head of him a did a quick search: "statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections". None of that, except stats, is Slashdot fodder. I guessing people who live in a country that screens ABC News might know the face but I can't say the picture jogs any memories here. As for on Slashdot a search show
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algorithm ownership (Score:2)
In most countries I don't think it is possible to own an algorithm.
Algorithms are considered to be a sequence of mathematical steps and mathematics can't be patented or copyrighted(at least not in the EU or the US).
An implementation of an algorithm, i.e. a program, can be copyrighted but that does NOT mean that algorithms used in the program are owned by anyone.
It also seems to be possible to get patents for 'computer-implemented inventions' but this seems to contradict the non patentability of maths and ma
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The US briefly flirted with not allowing the patenting of algorithms, and it's still technically not allowed. But you can patent a sequence of steps.
No, it doesn't make sense. I think it's because when lawyers say "algorithm" they either mean something very abstract, or very specific, like a particular machine learning model.
I expect Silver just owns the copyright to his software though. His stuff has lots of little fiddly details that can be hard to get right, so it would probably be somewhat expensive to
anyone else surprised (Score:2)
...that 538 was owned by Disney?
I don't recall them making that tremendously clear.
Re:anyone else surprised (Score:4, Informative)
...that 538 was owned by Disney?
I don't recall them making that tremendously clear.
It was in the news in 2018 when ABC bought them. It has an ABC logo at the top of the page, and a ABC copyright notice at the bottom. ABC is owned by Disney, this is well known to anyone who pays attention to media.
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Ah well that explains a lot. Originally it was a lot of really good data and analysis with a limited amount of commentary that was culture-war or off-topic. Lately it's been all culture war all the time and I unsubbed, so to speak, as a result.
Yep, unfortunately, outrage sells.
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When 538 was first bought, it was tied closely to ESPN. Sports have a lot of statistics, so it kind of made sense. But maybe since then it's moved more out into the news area under ABC? They're all owned by Disney, one big media conglomerate.
"to leave" (Score:2)
Leaving is such sweet sorrow.
a simpler title (Score:2)
this could be retitled and simplified as, "538.com to lose all notable content." . . .
Among my hats is statistics professor.
I found his analysis, particularly on relative ranking of polls, intriguing.
And then the outcome of the election.
But since that time, I've found that every item on that website *not* written my him be, well, dross.
On top of that, his have become rather rote and technical.
So a site with only one reason to read it is losing that reason.
Does Disney/abc have a contract term that they can