Best Nate Silver tweet yet.

[D23MIURG23]

@fivethirtyeight Politico: pundits don't know what's going on, therefore race IMPOSSIBLE to predict. Occam's razor: pundits are usless. http://t.co/9OCluflh


Its about time someone called the pundits out for pretending everything in the universe is a matter of opinion.

Kudos to Nate.

[northoftheborder]

1. Actually, all the pundits are useless, even the ones I like. I may stop watching any of them until

after the election.

[tridim]

2. He's quickly becoming my favorite nerd.

He's out to change things, with math.

[ginnyinWI]

3. he was good on Charlie Rose the other night

He's all math and facts and sticks to those, and was explaining how un-fact-based a lot of the pundits are.

[LVdem]

4. Nate was pretty good on...

Bill Maher last week.

it's hard to argue with his track record... unless you checked your brain at the door when you checked R on your voter registration.

[quinnox]

5. I just hope he turns out right

He is kind of like a prophet about this election, in a funny kind of way. Let's just hope he isn't a false one.

[D23MIURG23]

7. The whole point is that he isn't a prophet, but a scientist.

Unlike the pundits, his prediction is based on a reasoned and systematic assessment of the available evidence. If it turns out that all the polling data is inaccurately favoring Obama for some reason, then he will be wrong about some of his predictions.

That could happen, but all the systematic polling analyses I've seen this year are coming to similar conclusions. That means his model is reasonable at very least.

I hope he gets the overall outcome right at very least, because (aside from the horror of a president Rmoney and the inconvenience of being compelled to flee the country) the pundits he is going after will pretend that their "gut instincts" have been vindicated if Rmoney wins.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. "turns out right"?

he's not predicting the outcome, but the probability of a given outcome. His model gives Romney a 20% chance of winning, right now. Which is not far off from the chance of winning a football team that's down a field goal with three minutes on the clock has. Does it happen? Yes. Is it the most likely outcome? No. Or, put another way: if the weather forecast is for a 20% chance of rain, you probably want to take an umbrella just in case.

Nate Silver is not a prophet. He is not saying "Obama is definitely going to win". What he's saying is "based on the polling, the trends, comparison to past elections, and everything we know, Obama is significantly more likely to win this many electoral votes than he is to lose them".

[Quixote1818]

6. All the pundits have to do is predict based on Nate's numbers and they will look like a genius

on Tuesday.

[D23MIURG23]

9. IMO the ones antagonizing him stand a very good chance of looking like asses.

I think this is a great illustration of the way that a good half of the media personalities in this country don't have much respect for science, and don't understand why it works so well. They could be using Nate's work to look smart and well informed, but instead they are going to use it to humiliate themselves.

[SCVDem]

8. Between Nate and the betting line, we look good! n/t

[Buzz Clik]

10. The media NEED the race to be "undecided" as long as possible. Don't know why? GUE$$!!

[renegade000]

12. who's reminded of the scene at the end of moneyball?

i think "batshit crazy" is an apt description of the totally bizarre reaction many pundits have had to nate silver...

[jsmirman]

14. Ha - see my post below, and note that we were posting at the same time

I think you'll see I was driving to the core of his reaction.

[renegade000]

19. nice!

yeah, i've also noticed the frustration of krugman at people he thinks should know better, but persist in pushing what he thinks is nonsense. my favorite silly internet picture that summarizes the sentiment is:

[jsmirman]

20. LOL, that's hilarious

[jsmirman]

16. Although to be fair, as much soundness as there is in "find what is undervalued and exploit that"

and there is a lot of soundness in that strategy, one should never lose sight of the benefit of a starting staff built around four horses you get through the draft - and not just by being savvy in your selections, but four horses you got because you had *the* highest draft picks because you sucked for a number of years in a row.

See: The current Tampa Bay Rays.

Do I think Joe Maddon has some good ideas? Yes.

Do I think Joe Maddon looks a whole lot smarter thanks to a staff made up of Top 5 (sprinkle in Top 10) draft picks? Hell yes.

Did they get those high draft picks by really really sucking? Indeed.

Not sure why I point that out here, although it is funny to realize that all our sports leagues have a principle of redistribution at the heart of their businesses!

[jsmirman]

17. Btw, just looked at the Rays from 1999 to 2008

the draft positions of their first round selections in those years?

1, 6, 3, 2, 1, 4, 8, 3, 1, 1.

Back of the envelope says that's an average draft position of #3. For ten straight years.

Wow.

[renegade000]

18. i also like how americans are fine with a lot of regulation

in their sports to ensure fair play, but seem to hate the idea of regulation in real life .

also, with regard to "moneyball", i think the exaggerated hollywood version of the story seems more in line with all the silly drama between nate silver and the political pundits than what actually happened in baseball (to my, admittedly limited, understanding).

[jsmirman]

21. Yep - although actually, I suspect that drama in Moneyball was fairly real

Michael Lewis has never met a story he couldn't pump full of exaggeration and hyperbole (it's my frustration with him - even with the Blind Side, he had a good story that he didn't need to pump full of wild exaggerations), but I think old time scouts did want to strangle all the boy geniuses.

The A's did do a lot to change the game, but it's not like a lot of that wasn't already underway without them.

The Yankees, after all, had started to build their farm system around guys who saw a lot of pitches, took a lot of walks, and had high on base percentages years before Beane took control of the A's.

And the other thing with the A's is that they did a great job working with what they had available to them, but to do that they had to be put in a position where they had no other options and they also had to be willing to take certain chances that big market teams, with finances that depend on fielding top of the division teams, simply could not take.

Edited to add that the "yep" refers to regulation in sports. Funny enough, all the leagues have come around to the idea that the rich plowing forward wholly unfettered is not a successful model.

And before small market fans jump on that statement, remember, this doesn't just refer to the modern luxury tax - there was no first year player draft until 1965.

[jsmirman]

13. A guy like Nate eventually gets pissed off when people have it spelled out plainly

but won't listen.

It takes a long time, because he fundamentally believes that the more clearly he explains something, the more likely people are to understand, but there's a point at which he finds it pathetic and insulting.

If Krugman ever had any patience, he slipped those moorings long ago, but the way they both find willful stupidity to be insulting has some similarities.

[Lex]

15. I'm sure Nate gets tired of the people who think that 2+2=5 is as valid a "viewpoint" as

2+2=4.

[BootinUp]

22. Such simple, sound logic is so appealing

how can anyone argue with that.

[freshwest]

23. '...pretending everything in the universe is a matter of opinion.' Nailed it.

And their opinions are bought and paid for, so their alternate reality universe really is useless.

[Cha]

24. pundits are UseLess. Thanks for the tweet, D23MIURG23

[D23MIURG23]

25. No problem.