A quick lesson on making predictions

A quick lesson on making predictions Political analyst and statistician Nate Silver has gotten some flack lately for consistently projecting a 70-plus percent chance of a Barack Obama win this election. But as Jeff Leek explains, the criticism doesn't spawn from Silver being wrong. Rather, it comes from the critics' misunderstanding of statistics. Leek provides a quick lesson on how Silver makes his predications and how the methods apply to other things, like the weather. Now, this might seem like a goofy way to come up with a "percent chance" with simulated elections and all. But it turns out it is actually a pretty important thing to know and relevant to those of us on the East Coast right now. It turns out weather forecasts (and projected hurricane paths) are based on the same sort of thing — simulated versions of the weather are run and the "percent chance of rain" is the fraction of times it rains in a particular place. So Romney may still win and Obama may lose — and Silver may still get a lot of it right. But regardless, the approach taken by Silver is not based on politics, it is based on statistics. Don't fear the black box. Sandy aftermath: Power outages and flooding The New York Times provides a detailed look at the Sandy aftermath, across states and locally. With millions of people losing power in a short amount of time, the outages map and chart is the most dramatic. More than six million customers lost power Monday as Hurricane Sandy felled trees, downed power lines and flooded substations. The storm led to power failures in at least 17 states, including more than a million customers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and about 660,000 in New York City. Become a member. Get access to tutorials and directly support FlowingData. You are receiving this email because you opted in on FlowingData. Mailing address: FlowingData PO Box 3381 Livermore, CA 94550 Add us to your address book Unsubscribe | Update subscription preferences