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Nate Silver challenges Sam Wang to a duel: Calculators at dawn.
Election forecaster Nate Silver did something unusual on Wednesday: He openly criticized another election forecaster's modeling.
The target of his critique was Princeton University's Sam Wang, whose 2014 forecasts have been published by The New Yorker. Silver took the unusual step, he wrote at FiveThirtyEight, because of the disparity between his model and Wang's. Silver's most recent forecast Tuesday gave the Republicans a 53 percent chance of taking over the Senate. Wang's Wednesday forecast shows Democrats with a 70 percent chance of keeping it.
...
Silver took issue with the Wang model's methodology and weighing of polling averages.
....
Wang indirectly responded to Silver's critique in a post of his own on Wednesday, writing that there was a difference between his model's Senate poll snapshot (which gave Democrats an 80 percent on Wednesday) and its forecast which allowed for some uncertainty between now and November (and in turn put the Democratic odds at 70 percent).
Nerd fight
The target of his critique was Princeton University's Sam Wang, whose 2014 forecasts have been published by The New Yorker. Silver took the unusual step, he wrote at FiveThirtyEight, because of the disparity between his model and Wang's. Silver's most recent forecast Tuesday gave the Republicans a 53 percent chance of taking over the Senate. Wang's Wednesday forecast shows Democrats with a 70 percent chance of keeping it.
...
Silver took issue with the Wang model's methodology and weighing of polling averages.
....
Wang indirectly responded to Silver's critique in a post of his own on Wednesday, writing that there was a difference between his model's Senate poll snapshot (which gave Democrats an 80 percent on Wednesday) and its forecast which allowed for some uncertainty between now and November (and in turn put the Democratic odds at 70 percent).
Nerd fight
