Nate Silver is OUT Magazine's Person of the Year

Image from Out Magazine.

Number-crunching election wizard Nate Silver was, for a time, my island of sanity in the choppy waters after the first presidential debate. Remember that? Against all odds, after President Obama's lackluster performance, Mitt Romney's star started to shine. A legend was built that Romney was a-mah-zing in the debate (he wasn't), and that he had momentum (he didn't). Nate Silver was almost alone in his quiet, calm assertion: it's all cool. Yes, Romney had ticked up, but it was a ripple, not a tidal wave. Barring a game changing event, Obama would win, and win handily. The rest of the debates went well, but the punditry was all, "Mittmentum!" Nate was still serene. Ultimately, he'd predicted exactly how the election would go, to the state.

So, Nate Silver is now a star. The whole country is going to be paying attention to him in 2014 and especially 2016. I don't know what he's going to do to keep himself busy in the meantime, but for sure he can write his own ticket.

[Excerpt]

Nate Silver: Person of the Year

. . .For months in the run-up to the election, Silver, editor of FiveThirtyEight, a blog hosted by The New York Times, had been analyzing the polling data and calmly explaining, to the contempt of pundits on Fox and the gratitude of viewers of MSNBC, why Obama had the election sewn up. His quiet confidence—he bet Joe Scarborough $2,000 that the president would win re-election— attracted fans and haters alike.. . .

Read more at: Out

Republicans Suck at Math, and Hate the Chevy Volt

Obama in a Volt, or, "Evil in a Failure!" Image from
Wonkette.

I remember when the movie Superman Returns came out, and from the beginning the reports were that the movie would have to make more than $200 million in order to make up its development costs. The movie did clear that hurdle, but was still widely considered to be a failure for not reaching Iron Man or Avengers-level money, in order to make money on top of its investment. Well, it was also derided because people didn't like it (I did, but I'm in the minority). But it was saddled with all of the money wasted on early drafts and hired-then-fired cast and crew from aborted earlier treatments.

The Chevy Volt is getting a bit of that seemingly unfair treatment at the moment. First, it had a lot of development costs. Second--for some reason--conservatives, led by Rush Limbaugh despise the car.* So, just like conservatives will believe just about anything that makes President Obama look bad, no matter how far-fetched, the calculations about just how much each Chevy Volt is losing is a bit of a stretch. When I heard Limbaugh bloviating about it today on the radio, I knew there had to be more to it. There always is. The bad math comes from assuming there will never be another Volt (or derivative), and dividing the development and production costs between each existing model. Which isn't very honest.

It would be at this point that I should point out that Rupert Murdoch lost millions of dollars on FOX "News" for years, and years, before it posted a profit. Sometimes you have to pump money into a project for a while before it bears fruit. Hopefully, General Motors produces less rotten fruit, though!

[Excerpt]

No, GM Is Not Losing $49K On Every Volt; Reuters Just Fails at Basic Business Math

If there’s one characteristic that distinguishes conservatives from liberals, it’s business acumen, right? Libruls may occasionally be able to sell some patchouli-scented hemp-based iPod cozies at the Lesbian Sisterhood crafts fair, but conservatives are the folks who REALLY understand how Bidness works! That’s pretty much the premise of every Republican campaign in the last 30 years, after all. So how is it that when a journalist made a pretty obvious error in a story, the supposedly business-savvy folks in the right-wing blogosphere went nuts passing on the story’s erroneous conclusions? . . .

Read more at: Wonkette


* Obviously, conservatives dislike anything Obama has done, even if he was enacting conservative ideas. Everything. And even thought the Volt--as the story above mentions--was started in 2007, they link its perceived failure with Obama. But doesn't it bother anyone that Limbaugh is leading the parade of hatred not just against our President, but against an American institution like GM?

Sprint's Creative Math

I was just looking over my monthly Sprint mobile phone bill, a bill that has swelled from $60+ per month for two lines to $120+ per month for smart phones. Anyway, this was the first month where our normal rates apply, after having purchased said phones, and having those costs paid off. So, I thought I'd peruse the details of the thing.

As it turns out, a lot is covered, which is fortunate given the monthly cost. We have unlimited anytime minutes (between Sprint customers), anytime mobile (any mobile phone), text, night & weekend, picture mail, 3G data, and even 3G data roaming. That's pretty sweet. And between the two of us, we only used 214 of our allotted 1,500 monthly minutes. But there some interesting nuggets in the rows of numbers on my bill.

For instance, The Other Half used 39,163 3G data  minutes. Downloading porn, no doubt (kidding, honey). That's a lot, right? Then, I  looked at mine: 100,609 minutes! Holy crap! What is my phone doing when I'm not using it? It's either in my pocket or on my desk about 98% of the time. And. . .wait. . .how many minutes are in a month, anyway?

31 days X 24 hours X 60 minutes = 44,640 minutes.

Soooo, either Sprint's math is way off, or the row of numbers on my bill represents something other than minutes. The column is headed "Used," and lists other things that are clearly minutes. But it lists 292 under texts for me, which must be a total number (but sounds a bit too high). So, it could be megabytes, gigabytes, hell Sprint-bucks for all I know. I'm just happy I have unlimited. . .whatever they are.

Could Texas Go Democratic in November?

There have been a lot of people predicting the electoral map for the fall election, using pretty much the same logic that has applied in the past. But I wonder if they're making a big mistake in the math.

Sure, if you poll 500 Democrats and 500 Republicans on their choices, you're going to get something only slightly different than 50%. But what if many, many more from one party show up to vote? With my fingers crossed, and my cynicism battened down, I'm hoping that will be exactly the scenario that plays out this fall. And if this (very slickly produced) video of the Texas Democratic Convention is an indicator, we might just see a bunch of Republican "safe states" unexpectedly turning blue!



Found at: Democratic Underground