prediction
gregladen | May 21, 2016As you know, I’ve been running a model to predict the outcomes of upcoming Democratic Primary contests. The model has change over time, as described below, but has always been pretty accurate. Here, I present the final, last, ultimate version of the model, covering the final contests coming up in June.
Why predict primaries and caucuses?
Predicting primaries and caucuses is annoying to some people. Why not just let people vote? Polls predict primaries and caucuses, and people get annoyed at polls.
But there are good reasons to make these predictions. Campaign managers might want to have…
gregladen | April 18, 2016As you know, I've been applying a model to predict the outcome of each of the Democratic Primary contests, and have done pretty well at predicting results.
All of the future contests are primaries, not caucuses. It turns out that the two modes have very different patterns. Many have suggested that this has to do with how the process works, and somehow caucuses, or open contests, favor Sanders, who has won several. However, it also turns out that caucusing is a northern thing (and Sanders does somewhat better in the north, or more accurately perhaps, rarely wins in the south). Caucusing is…
gregladen | April 2, 2016We are in the Primary Doldrums. For the last several days and the next several days, there is not too much happening, big gaps between the action. Wisconsin is important, and it is Tuesday, Then Wyoming by itself, then New York by itself, then a sort of Super Tuesday with several states.
As you know I've created a multivariable model that has a good record of predicting primary and caucus outcomes in the contests between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. For the rest of the primary season, this is what it looks like.
I used yellow highlighting to indicate who is expected to win the…
gregladen | March 16, 2016Almost exactly 50% of the votes have been cast in the Democratic Party primary and caucus process. I've been updating a model to predict primary and caucus results all along, and the model has done fairly well. The most recent update, however, was a bit off. That update involved separating states into two groups, southern vs northern, then calculating different sets of likely voting patterns by ethnicity for those two groups, and integrating that with estimates of ethnic distribution ("white, black, hispanic") among Democratic voters by state.
What I did not do in those models was to…
gregladen | March 12, 2016Most polls and FiveThirtyEight predict a Clinton blow-out on Tuesday, with her winning all five states, in some cases by a large margin. My model, however, predicts that each candidate will win a subset of these states, but with Clinton still win the day.
I’ve been working on a model to predict primary outcomes for the Democratic selection process, and generally, the model has proved very effective. After each set of primaries I’ve adjusted the model to try to do a better job of predicting the upcoming contests. The most important adjustment is the one that affects the current model.
The…
gregladen | February 28, 2016You may be asking yourself the same question, especially if, like me, you vote on Tuesday, March 1st.
For some of us, a related question is which of the two is likely to win the nomination.
If one of the two is highly likely to win the nomination, then it may be smart to vote for that candidate in order to add to the momentum effect and, frankly, to end the internecine fighting and eating of young within the party sooner. If, however, one of the two is only somewhat likely to win the nomination, and your preference is for the one slightly more likely to lose, then you better vote for the…
gregladen | February 1, 2016As of 8:45 or so PM:
Cruz 28.9 Trump 25.6 Rubio 20.8
I'm privileged to live in Minnesota, which is Iowa's neighbor and thus not so different from Iowa, except our college football teams are better.
And it isn't just the corn, but also, the caucus. We do that here too. Our caucus system is similar enough to Iowa that one can have a sense of what goes on over the border just with some local experience.
So let me tell you a story. I volunteered one day to help out a friend with a local campaign. The idea was to show up at the local VFW post and engage in a caucus to determine a DFL (that's…
gregladen | January 22, 2016The answer: One Republican and One Democrat/Independent.
The Iowa Caucus is pretty much up for grabs in both parties. Over recent days, a clear Trump lead has been erased, and Cruz is now ahead in recent polls. Over roughly the same period, a clear Clinton lead has been erased, and Sanders is now ahead in recent polls.
FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver) is still predicting a Clinton victory for the Dems, but a Cruz victory for the GOPs. The Clinton victory prediction is of high confidence, while the Cruz prediction is not, and Trump is close behind.
One way to look at the polls is to track…
gregladen | March 12, 2014We are reaching the point where Arctic Sea ice tends to max out, in terms of extent (I will not be talking about volume here, though that is vitally important). Using data provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, I ran an informal "Science by Spreadsheet" analysis and came up with a prediction for the minimum extent of sea ice this year, which would be some time in September.
This is mostly a seat of the pants analysis and don't take it too seriously, but feel free to put your bets in the comments section.
The data over the last few decades shows a generally declining extent of…
esiegel | October 26, 2012"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." -Niels Bohr
What's going to happen next? It's perhaps the most important thing to know if we want to be prepared for practically anything in our lives. And without even thinking about it, most of us are actually very good at this in a huge number of aspects of our lives. For example...
Image credit: Crazy Adventures in Parenting.
I was hungry at work today, and I was prepared for it. Somehow, I knew that I was going to need food throughout the course of the day, and so I was prepared for it by bringing food from home. This…
pronald | December 31, 2011In Memoriam,
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws…
sastyk | December 30, 2011First of all, I owe y'all an apology for the radio silence. Somehow this month I've felt a deep need for some quiet, rest and offlineness. It was quite an autumn here - it started with the destruction of Irene and Lee (and dealing with those disasters are still a major part of life in our community although they've faded from public focus), included the usual autumn and holiday rush, our usual sequence of family events and birthday parties (three kids have birthday in six weeks, right after the high holidays wind up), ASPO, my book, two foster placements and the loss of M., and the wind up…
stoat | February 28, 2011Time for another look at sea ice. Here is the familiar IARC-JAXA plot:
And we see: well, it is looking low, and has been consistently all winter. Not record-breakingly, like it was last December, but even so. Interesting.
This year, I'm not planning to run a book, unless anyone offers to make a worthwhile bet. I'll put up my "prediction", which is the same as ever: the mean prediction is for the trend amount, i.e. the same as last year minus a little bit (5.235, as I recall), and the "bet range" is that plus or minus interannual variation, which as I recall is around 0.5 units. If you happen…
stoat | November 29, 2010On of the key parts of science is prediction. Or so we're told. So it is fun to watch various people rip Steve Goddard's predictions of sea ice to shreds. WUWT is the one boosting Goddard's worthless noise.
* RMG seems to be the most complete, prompted I think by:
* Tamino and
* Neven.
There's a video, too, if you're in the habit of watching moving pictures.
Update
An update, but worth its own header. While we're on forecasting, I am reminded of something altogether more real: the Keenlyside fiasco. RC has a recent post pointing out how wrong K et al. were (but in a caring, consensual sort of…
pronald | January 7, 2010The Long Now Foundation has a fabulous website where you can make predictions about the future that are societally or scientifically important.
Make a prediction or challenge a prediction.
My prediction is simply this:
"By 2020, GE crops will be grown on 10 fold more acreage than they are today, will be widely accepted by consumers and will have clearly benefited the goals of sustainable agriculture"
Sign on to challenge me to bet on this prediction!
edyong | November 12, 2009How would you fancy a holiday to Greece or Thailand? Would you like to buy an iPhone or a new pair of shoes? Would you be keen to accept that enticing job offer? Our lives are riddled with choices that force us to imagine our future state of mind. The decisions we make hinge upon this act of time travel and a new study suggests that our mental simulations of our future happiness are strongly affected by the chemical dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries signals within the brain. Among its many duties is a crucial role in signalling the feelings of enjoyment we…
illconsidered | July 7, 2009Marc Morono (sick) breathlessly announces that Gavin Schmidt has finally admitted that weather is chaotic and GCMs can not model it.
And yes, that is about as shocking an admission as water is wet.
Here is the incriminating quote:
"The problem with climate prediction and projections going out to 2030 and 2050 is that we don't anticipate that they can be tested in the way you can test a weather forecast. It takes about 20 years to evaluate because there is so much unforced variability in the system which we can't predict -- the chaotic component of the climate system -- which is not…
edyong | March 19, 2009Want to know how much you'd enjoy an experience? You're better off asking someone who has been through it, even if they're a complete stranger, than to find out information for yourself. This advice comes from Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, who espoused it in his superb book Stumbling on Happiness. Now, he has found new support for the idea by studying speed-daters and people receiving feedback from their peers.
In the first study, he found that female students were better able to predict how much they would enjoy a speed-date if they listened to the experiences of strangers than if…
razib | March 10, 2009At Genetic Future. As noted by Dr. MacArthur this is currently an exception to the rule when it comes to predicting traits from genes. This can come in handy when you have DNA samples from a crime scene and reconstructing the appearance of the perp.
Related: OCA2, the "blue eye gene".
bleimanb | May 15, 2008Stories are emerging all over China of how animals started behaving peculiarly days and hours before Monday's deadly earthquake. According to a story filed by the Associated Press, one Chinese province was overrun with toads days before it struck, and hours before the quake in a zoo 600 miles west of the earthquake's center, zebras began banging their heads against the door of their enclosure; elephants swung their trunks wildly and uncharacteristically in a nearby exhibit; lions were awake at during their normal napping times; and peacocks screeched out in unison as if warning their fellow…