Quote and Comment

November 1, 2012

Nate Silver of 538.com and his critics in the press corps. Get your literacy up.

With these five links… (Only have time for one? Fine: one. Want more than five? Scroll down.)

Dylan Byers in Politico. Nate Silver: One-term celebrity? …Sets forth some criticisms of Silver and observes that he has a lot riding on the outcome of the election.

Brendan Nyhan in CJR. Pundits versus probabilities: The misguided backlash against Nate Silver… Responds to those criticisms.

New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan. Under Attack, Nate Silver Picks the Wrong Defense. …Knocks Silver for offering to bet on his prediction. (Proceeds to charity.)

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, Sorry, Margaret, You Need to Get Out More. “…Silver is not really reliant on the Times at all. He’s his own brand.”

Mark Coddington at his blog. Why political journalists can’t stand Nate Silver: The limits of journalistic knowledge… This is about data masters vs. interpreters of the race.

Bonus link: for those want to know a lot about this argument.

Snark version: Deadspin, Nate Silver’s Braying Idiot Detractors Show That Being Ignorant About Politics Is Like Being Ignorant About Sports

Academic lit crit version: The Passion of Nate Silver (Sort Of) by Natalia Cecire of Yale University. (“This is a form of boyishness, as boyishness has been constructed in U.S. history.”)

Geek version, In Defense of Nate Silver, Election Pollsters, and Statistical Predictions by Zeynep Tufekci in Wired. (Want less horse race journalism? Then you want Nate Silver’s modeling.)

Photo credit: Randy Stewart, Creative Commons License.

11:50pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZdoMYyWQrRI1
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(Notes: 22)