I have
to give the man credit. I thought that after his predictions were
revealed to be the laughing stock of the last elections, we wouldn't
hear from him again. Instead, Dean Chambers continues to make
statisticians weep with frustration as he gives statistics and math
in general a bad name. Only after finding this
article on Dispatches from the Culture Wars did I realize that
Mr. Chambers didn't disappear from shame like any decent person would
after completely ruining so many peoples' understanding of
mathematics.
Ed
Brayton said:
Gosh, it seems like you tried to make this exact same argument last year and ended up with enough egg on your face to make an omelette the size of Toledo.
If
anything, Mr. Brayton is letting Mr. Chambers off easy. Essentially
he didn't like the way that the numbers were turning out for his
choice of president. Instead of accepting the numbers, as near as I
can tell he decided to arbitrarily pick polls that he thought
reflected reality and claim that the others were skewed. He would
take data from a poll that he liked and their internal numbers to
modify a different poll. The results was that nothing he produced was
even remotely accurate.
Mr.
Chambers seemed to try to use mathematical slight of hand instead of
real statistics to force reality into his liking. Fortunately for us
reality doesn't work that way. So Mr. Chambers, go on unskewing your
polls. Reality isn't going to care any more about your numbers now
that it did last year.
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