Nassim Talebs case against Nate Silver is bad math

Re:Nassim Talebs case against Nate Silver is bad math by ikeboy on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @08:13PM (#19620387)

Sure, but as a good Bayesian you should be willing to bet based on that expected value, not based on the spread.

Re polls: still more complicated than that, even with 100% polling you'd still have response error and non-voters. Much of the difference between polls is their assumptions about demographics of voters.

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Re:Nassim Talebs case against Nate Silver is bad math by comex on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @08:33PM (#19620523)

Sure, but that doesn’t mean 538 can’t include information about the spread, in addition to their top-line number which is just a single probability.

And yes, my discussion of polling error was oversimplified, but I was mainly just trying to explain what I meant about having to treat something as random if it’s theoretically predictable given enough information.

EDIT: Hold on; I don’t think 538 does include error bars for their probabilities. They have error bars for measurables like the vote share, but that’s normal. So I don’t understand what this argument is even about :)

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Re:Nassim Talebs case against Nate Silver is bad math by ikeboy on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @08:47PM (#19620598)

Someone several comments up suggested Silver should include error bars and should bet based on a spread, I said that was not proper Bayesian methods, then we had this back and forth.

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