Who is “winning” the U.S. presidential race? No one is winning the race, because it depends on what people do on Election Day. There is no “ahead” or “behind.” It’s not like a basketball game where the team with a 20-point lead is far more likely to win, and the team with a 20-point deficit…
Election forecaster and statistics pundit Nate Silver has a new book out. It’s called On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything and it’s billed as an investigation of “the River,” the “community of like-minded people whose mastery of risk allows them to shape–and dominate–so much of modern life.” Like any author, Silver and his…
Newsletter 57: Is rewarding heroics making your workplace better? Plus, Project 2025 book delayed, AI’s marketing value is less than zero, Scottish WorldCon triumph, three people to follow and three books to read. Every heroic workplace act is a sign of failure I worked in companies for 33 years. I was often the hero, and…
It’s clear that Russians interfered in our elections. But their objective was not primarily to elect Donald Trump — it was to make us hate each other. And they’re succeeding. New information on Russian troll activity is now available, including a corpus of 3 million tweets from Russian trolls who were part of a foreign…
Who’s going to win the special election for the next U.S. Senator from Alabama? According to the two most recent polls, it’s either Republican Roy Moore by 9 points or Democrat Doug Jones by 10 points. How is this much variation even possible? Unless a pollster stands over the shoulder of each individual who votes…
My Facebook feed is full of people angry at election forecaster Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, declaring him a failure. They’re wrong. Here’s why he was right . . . and why you’re blaming the wrong guy. My argument has three simple points: Nate Silver’s forecast wasn’t wrong, because he didn’t predict a Clinton win. Polling…
I’ve said that true analysts find bigger truths when they’re wrong. Smart people predicted Donald Trump would never win the Republican nomination. It’s pretty revealing what they learned from their mistakes. Let’s look in particular at the mea culpa pieces by Nate Cohn of the New York Times’ feature “The Upshot” and Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com. First, admit your mistake True analysts…
If you want clear and useful thinking, you need a true analyst, not just somebody who calls themselves an analyst. True analysts pursue thinking as a discipline. Let’s look at the qualities and skills that define that discipline. If you watch TV or read the media, it seems like you’re always hearing from analysts —…
Good evening, everyone. I’m Josh Bernoff, your moderator for the PBS/WOBS presidential debate, here in Washington, DC. This is a historic debate in a brand-new format, which I’ll now describe. For the first time, we’ve brought together the leading candidates from both parties in one debate. There are no time limits on your answers. However, I and…