numeracy

You look experienced in that photo

When he has the real deal guests like Rand, and Ron it's worth it.. although Ron is really selling out with the doomsday stuff the financial firm must pay his balla bucks...

Yeah the ppl listening for chuck Norris's uncles brothers sisters fathers former roommate... facepalm

Bad like the vast majority of America.

Approximately 3.5%.

Even though she was wrong about MOE, she was right that when you have people polling so close at 3-4-5% that margin of error could knock people out of the debate. Who is 5th, 6th or 7th really doesn't matter so the issue isn't as significant as she said.

The kasich/christie/perry battle at the cutoff could just comedown to poll variance

Also props to post #97 for the pictures, me like pictures

I'm not even sure what MSNBC's core demographic is, tbh. People who are young enough to want hot liberal takes but are old enough that they still get their news from the TV? That's a narrow window of 30-40 somethings and aging hippies iyam.

I just think most folks genY and below don't even get their news from cable TV.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/...ne-189393.html

Take that fwiw

+/-3%

Average age of MSNBC viewers is 63. Spry for cable news.

I agree with these assessments in and of themselves, but they are separate from "the error should have been obvious to her."

Interestingly enough, this statement is worded perfectly for application to 95% of people posting on a certain popular Internet poker forum.

Maddow is awesome. This seems like a bizarre thing to nitpick over, especially when you consider how small the sample sizes for some of these polls are. First one I pulled up was conducted over 1,017 respondents.

I'm 33. I very, very rarely watch political talking head shows, maybe only a few dozen times in my life, and Maddow represents most of those. I know almost no one in my age category who ever watches these shows with any regularity on either side of the political aisle.

Having now watched a few shows, Maddow's pattern is that she gathers news items, tells a story, and draws a conclusion. She then turns to an expert and asks "Am I right?" Since her analysis is always checked, I'm fine with it. Maybe David should see about being a guest on the show.

Wait....what was the stupid part exactly?

If its not knowing the definition of MOE (which I guess is defined as maximum possible for a candidate in a given poll??) that seems akin to the freshman mistake of saying "Set A is open....so not closed!!!!" Obv the definitions have not been learned well, but its not a real logic error imo. More laziness and inexactness between human invented everyday language and god invented math.

If its that a MOE of s for <X> and <Y> does not imply an MOE of 2s (or s?) for <X-Y>.....I think 99+% of non stupid people make that mistake. And I doubt the 1% who have essentially memorized the fact or have intuitively figured it out have much more correct views on politics.

But her intuition.... that polls can't really draw such clear distinctions between that many candidates polling that close is prob correct. She was wrong if she thought that random error alone is why but systemic + random could very well get her there.

God damnit

It would be close to impossible that #s 14, 15, or 16, were actually in the top ten and she was implying otherwise. And made a big deal of it without checking.

Easily the funniest part of all of this is that even tho I am sure that Fox is aware she made this error, they would never dare highlight it because they know it would fly way over the head of their bumpkin, uneducated and aggressively ignorant base. A base that is well known, internationally even, as being anti-intellectual and hating everything that doeasn't sound like something Trump would say

Except her error doesn't get them off the hook because her contention is true as it pertains to spots 9 thru 12 or thereabouts.

Also, ironically, Trump might understand this stuff reasonably well as he went to Wharton and had to take a class in it.

By the way, I think her error may actually be even greater than stated. I think she may have averaged five polls and used the MOE for one. If so that would be one more mark against her intuition.

How big do you think they should/need to be?

So, we've moved on to the wishcasting round of this thread.

I wouldn't call that wishcasting as much as the "well Mr. X went to the same school I went to so obv he's probably pretty smart QED" part.

As far as what type of issues that could be misanalysed by someone who doesn't find it obvious that someone at one percent won't actually be four percent, you have things like that Asian trade deal, the optimum minimum wage that doesn't do more harm than good, the Keystone pipeline, and whether the risk of Ebola justifies restrictions on immigration. That sort of thing. Its not enough that your heart is in the right place.