General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This! This! This all day long. Without comment [View all]progree
(11,449 posts)and doesn't know jack shit about probability and statistics either.
0.0016 is 0.16% or 16 hundredths of a percent as you say.
Apparently an elementary school math teacher.
And as others have said, (s)he assumed the events were independent, and of course they are not.
And why did (s)he multiply 5 states together? Why not more? Or less? Why not just the 3 closest ones that if Hillary had won -- she would have been president? Or one could multiply the probabilities of all 50 states coming out as they did -- the result would be a much smaller probability. (And again such calculations would be assuming independent outcomes)
And of course, any calculation, even when done by an inspired mathematical / statistical genius, is only as good as the data that is used. The 538 state probabilities aren't established scientific facts. As they say, GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out)
-------------- From Huxenstein's tweets ------------------------------------
I'm a Math teacher. Prob Trump would win all 5 swing states was .0016, 16 ten thousandths of 1%.
Take the probabilities from 538 and turn them into decimals, then multiply
Fl(44.9%=.449)
MI(21.1%=.211)
NC(44.5%=.445)
PA (23.0% =.230)
WI (16.5%=.165)
Multiply together to get .00159, which I rounded to .0016
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