Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Robot Laughter

I really can't say enough about how awesome Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight is. One of the best things about visiting is looking at the fascinating chart in the right margin, where they outline the current probability of various election outcomes, based on the 10,000 scenarios the model processes each day. For example, they look at the probability that (all numbers based on 9:28 EST on 10/21/08):

McCain wins popular vote (9.48%, 948/10000)
Obama loses Ohio, but wins the election (77.69%, 2264/2914)
McCain loses Ohio, but wins the election (0.04%, 3/7086)
Identical map to the 2000 election (0.28%, 28/10000)

My favorite scenario, though, is the one in which McCain wins in a landslide, which is defined at 375+ electoral votes. Right now that is at 0.07%, or 7 times out of 10,000 scenarios. One very funny commenter remarks:

"I wonder if The Model gives a little digital chuckle when it simulates one of its seven McCain landslides."

By the way, right now and Obama landslide is predicted 36.37% of the time.

-Education Dude

No comments: