538
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
538 points (96.9% liked)
News
37771 readers
2142 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Most people have a really, really awful understanding of how statistics work.
Preach.
Yes it’s all margin of error. But what I’m seeing personally is Biden was consistently 2-4% down (conservatively) in every state that mattered (which was within the margin of error) and Harris is up 2-4% in every state that matters now (which is also within the margin of error).
I’d rather be the Harris campaign right now than the (now defunct) Biden or (panicking) Trump campaigns. Qualify it all you want folks 🤷♂️
No I’m not complacent. I’m excited to vote.
We don't know the sample size; so we don't know the margin of error.
I mean, click a couple links and it's right there
MI: 619 PA: 693 WI: 661 All of registered voters
Using the amount of total registered voters in each respective state and a 95% CI, we get the following margins of error MI: ±3.939% PA: ±3.723% WI: ±3.811%
Depending on the exact lead (NYT only shows round percents, not specific numbers for each response), all of those are potentially within the top end of that margin of error.
Am I trying to claim that a swing from being down by ~4% to being up by ~4% means nothing and is indicative of nothing? Of course not. But man, most people really do not at all understand how statistics work, and I really wish people would stop talking out of their ass about it.
So which links did you click? The one that goes to NYT is paywalled.
NYT polls aren't pay walled
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/10/us/elections/times-siena-poll-likely-electorate-crosstabs.html
If I remember this correctly, the square of the error for the sum of (or difference between) two independent measurements is the sum of the squares of the individual errors. Gauss something.
That would make the error for the 8 point swing be sqrt(2×3.8²) or about 5.4. So at least the swing is significant in each state.
Also, the error for the average of 3 variables is sqrt(e1²+e2²+e3²)/3 or 2.2 so the average lead in the 3 states is significant.
But we can't make a significant claim about the lead in each state.
It’s easy. When Kamala is down we say that polls don’t matter as much they used to, but when she’s up polls are obviously right. The margin of error is just a thing we use after the fact to justify whether the polls are useless (Kamala losing) or absolutely correct (Kamala winning)
It was paywalled for me 🤷♂️
“I don’t see it” =/= “the information doesn’t exist and you don’t know so I’m right”
Next time try this asking.
Next time try to not take a statement as an insult.
I’d like to reiterate my larger point but I could’ve done it less abrasively, yes. Sorry about that.
I love how any time someone wants to argue about stats they act like this information can’t possibly be obtained and talk as if the sample size must be like 7 people.