Some loser vagrant tried to break into my Iowa headquarters! Disgraceful!

^ that's a good one.

need gameday thread for today.

Donald Trump answers the question: What is 2+2? (Credit: Steven Edwards)

"I have to say a lot of people have been asking this question. No, really. A lot of people come up to me and they ask me. They say, 'What's 2+2'? And I tell them look, we know what 2+2 is. We've had almost eight years of the worst kind of math you can imagine. Oh my God, I can't believe it. Addition and subtraction of the 1s the 2s and the 3s. It's terrible. It's just terrible. Look, if you want to know what 2+2 is, do you want to know what 2+2 is? I'll tell you. First of all the number 2, by the way, I love the number 2. It's probably my favorite number, no it is my favorite number. You know what, it's probably more like the number two but with a lot of zeros behind it. A lot. If I'm being honest, I mean, if I'm being honest. I like a lot of zeros. Except for Marco Rubio, now he's a zero that I don't like. Though, I probably shouldn't say that. He's a nice guy but he's like, '10101000101,' on and on, like that. He's like a computer! You know what I mean? He's like a computer. I don't know. I mean, you know. So, we have all these numbers, and we can add them and subtract them and add them. TIMES them even. Did you know that? We can times them OR divide them, they don't tell you that, and I'll tell you, no one is better at the order of operations than me. You wouldn't believe it. So, we're gonna be the best on 2+2, believe me."

well done

He forgot to add..." I went to an Ivy League school and I am highly educated. I love numbers.... I have the best numbers!"

bump

Failed pundit Nate Silvers steals 2+2 poster's thesis for the title of his new article trying to rationalize his failures. Disgraceful!

Did you read Nate's article beyond the headline?

Yup, he agreed with me that he acted like a pundit. He did!

So you just read the headline then. I feel like this pretty much captures what we were all trying to tell you:

Right, but then he agrees with me that that was a mistake in that he was dismissing the polls based on very sparse endorsement data. And he thinks that he was acting like a pundit.

He dismissed the early polls and over-emphasized endorsements because that model worked in 2012-2004. He essentially overfit his models, which ironically is something he warns about in his book.

Right, which I pointed out several months ago was basically standard punditry. I mean you can say Silvers "overfit his model" but as he says he didn't have a model. He like read a book about endorsements and then was all TRUMP doesn't has endorsements, lol can't win. Which is straight up ******ed punditry. He overfit his model in the exact same way every other dumbass pundit overfit his model (but seriously none of them, including Silvers, had a model).

but this is an odd series of events

SenorKeed: Nate Silvers screwed up by acting like a pundit and ignoring relevant data
Trolly McIkerserson: LEAVE NATE SILVERS ALONE HE USES DATA
Nate Slivers: Guys I screwed up by acting like a pundit and ignoring relevant data
SenorKeed: Like I said!
Trolly McTrollson: NATE USES DATA

Poasters refusing to concede Silver was engaging in punditry even after Silver himself concedes it. Sad!

I feel like there's a pretty good chance Nate is lurking these threads.

Lesson: statistics > guestimating?

More like "if you have sparse data, it's ok to say that you're not sure and you don't have much to say".

You don't need a lot of data to form a hypothesis. If Silver had said "I believe Trump is a dog because _______" and made it clear he was collecting data to test it would be perfectly reasonable. From my understanding, that's not what he did though.