1131: Math

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 16:25, 7 November 2012 by TheHYPO (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
Math
As of this writing, the only thing that's 'razor-thin' or 'too close to call' is the gap between the consensus poll forecast and the result.
Title text: As of this writing, the only thing that's 'razor-thin' or 'too close to call' is the gap between the consensus poll forecast and the result.

Explanation

In another election-themed comic (this one posted the day after the 2012 U.S. presidential election (see 1122: Electoral Precedent, 1127: Congress, and 1130: Poll Watching), this comic shows a bar graph representing expected (see note below) electoral college votes in the election, including a dotted line indicating the 270 votes needed to win, a span of media & exit poll projections ("Forecast"), and the actual result. Such a visual -- and the true result of the election -- can only be based on the actual data available, proving the comic's point that the numbers matter more than any rhetoric.

For those unfamiliar with the US Presidential electoral process: unlike other political offices, the election for president is not a direct election. Instead, each state is apportioned a certain number of "electoral college" votes based on population. For the most part (and there is perennial discussion on whether this should be changed) the candidate that receives the most votes in a given state receives all the electoral college votes for that state. Receiving 270 electoral college votes is deemed sufficient to be declared president-elect. For this reason, it is possible to have one candidate actually receive more "popular" votes (more people voted for the candidate,) but have fewer electoral college votes, and consequently, why some "battleground states" are so hotly contested.

The electoral college votes are expectations until the official voting in early December.


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

I really like the term "dramatically equal." - Kieran

Sorry, I don't know how to upload the correct image. - Artod

Picture downloaded from xkcd, uploaded to the wiki with the correct license and "xkcd" added to the filename as a prefix, then filename changed in page source to correct image. Hope this helps in the future! - Coombeseh (talk) 10:36, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Can somebody please explain further? I guess the joke is about the forecast? thank you --89.144.192.97 14:17, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Randall's on the nose again. This is why I just turned off all media yesterday, especially toward the end of the evening. Unless you're up for contrived suspense, it's really just tediousness lived through: barely five minutes of "news" per hour, the remaining "empty" time filled with the drone of talking heads waxing obnoxious about irrelevancies. This morning, the results are in, and I'm no worse for not having endured the conjectural drivel... -- IronyChef (talk) 15:25, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

As a note, the title text is referring to the consensus polls, including those at fivethirtyeight.com, which were referred to in the previous episode. Another interpretation of the "numbers" comment is that the predictions based on polling numbers and proper statistical analyses of those, rather than mere punditry and opinion, were always the best predictors of what was going to happen in this election. So not only could numbers retroactively tell us who won (based on actual votes) but numbers when used as individual data points with variance and sample sizes, and combined into an aggregate, were far more effective in telling us prospectively who was going to win. 128.104.149.65 18:11, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Numbers continue to be best system for determining? -- 204.191.29.154 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yes and no. In news stories (see newspaper headlines for an example), this is a typical format. You didn't notice the "To surprise of pundits" part that came first? 76.122.5.96 00:57, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I believe the previous entry was addressing the missing article "the" in the caption. mwburden 16:17, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
So was the answer. The caption, like many news headlines, omits the articles. "To [the] surprise of pundits, numbers continue to be [the] best system..." 72.169.224.103 15:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

For more critical relevance, he texted along these lines yesterday to one of the more prominent non-Nate Silver analysts, Prof. Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium -- 70.167.158.178 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I wish Randall had made the bar 538 pixels wide (it's only 400ish). - Frankie (talk) 11:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

"Explain the title text." What's there to explain? 173.245.52.109 22:18, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I removed the tag, and expanded the title text explanation.

Polling data gave trump a 30% or so chance of winning. That is more than it gave Romney, and probably a better chance than a lot of democrats thought he had. Probably not Douglas Hofstadter (talk) 13:58, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Statistical analysis of the polling data by FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a much better chance than it did Romney; but that was due to a number of factors not picked up by pundits, like the high number of undecideds in the run-up to the 2016 election, and that Nate Silver's models (correctly) showed the Electoral College as favoring Democrats in 2012 and Republicans in 2016 in case of a close popular vote. Raw nationwide polling numbers, without that statistical analysis, didn't look good for Trump. Pelosujamo (talk) 00:35, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Nate Silver and most other analysts vastly underestimated the high levels of misogyny prevalent in the USA that caused Hilary to lose to Trump. -- The Cat Lady (talk) 20:43, 19 September 2021 (UTC)