Election math

Nate Silver is the one garnering all the headlines, but the Princeton Election Consortium is another blog I follow that does meta-analysis of state polls. In 2008, their prediction came within 1 electoral vote of the final outcome, beating out FiveThirtyEight, among others.

Currently, Princeton Election Consortium forecasts Obama winning 303 electoral votes, giving Obama a 99.8% chance of winning re-election. FiveThirtyEight currently has Obama winning 307 electoral votes, with an 86.3% chance of winning re-election.

Silver has been the target of much recent criticism from pundits, and I've seen many people argue that stating Obama's chances at re-election as a percentage is meaningless. That is, if Silver says Obama has an 86.3% chance of re-election and he loses tomorrow, Silver loses all credibility.

No doubt Silver would take a fall from grace in the eyes of many if Obama loses tomorrow, but the percentage is meaningful. It's not the exact same analogy, but if I tell you a fair coin will come up heads 50% of the time and you flip it once and it comes up tails, that doesn't mean my percentage was wrong. Silver and others who are analyzing these state polls suffer from only having one trial. If you could run the election multiple times instead of once, the sampling error would likely decrease and the % of the time Obama wins should converge on Silver's prognostication, according to his math. This is why high level poker players will often ask a hand to be run out multiple times, or why if you count cards you have to play blackjack over an extended period of time to squeeze out a profit from your edge.

If Silver retires from the political space after this election (and from past things he's said it sure sounds like he's ready to move on to a new field; who can blame him), I'd love to see him release his methodology publicly, like open sourcing software. It will ensure his legacy lives on in this field even as he goes on to point his methodology at another problem space.

The economics of forgiveness in a marriage

My own approach is to think of the Coase theorem. Assume that you can’t redistribute happiness or wealth within the marriage. If your spouse is unhappy you will be unhappy and if your spouse is happy you are likely to be happy; happy wife, happy life. If you can’t redistribute happiness the play to make is to maximize total happiness. Maximizing total happiness means accepting apparent reductions in happiness when those result in even larger increases in happiness for your spouse. If you maximize the total, however, there will be more to go around and the reductions will usually be temporary.

That's Alex Tabarrok on the forgiveness versus tit-for-tat as a strategy for dealing with transgressions in a marriage. Only at Marginal Revolution will you hear the Coase theorem invoked in a discussion about marriage. If I were officiating another wedding I wonder if I could get away with dropping that in my marital advice.

I liked this:

...you really shouldn’t model a marriage as a prisoner’s dilemma.

Why Sally Jenkins hasn't written about Lance yet

Finally, Sally Jenkins breaks radio silence about why she hasn't written about Lance Armstrong yet in the wake of the USADA report. Jim Romenesko managed to get her to break her silence, even if her response is mostly a pass.

Jeremy Lin's turnover rate

Daryl Morey, GM of the Houston Rockets, took to Quora to respond to this question: Why is Jeremy LIn so turnover-prone and how can he fix this? A thoughtful answer, befitting an executive Bill Simmons dubbed Dork Elvis.

Now we just need New York Knicks GM Glen Grunwald to pop on Quora to explain why he thinks Raymond Felton is a better value than Lin.

Ohio State victory a good omen for Obama?

Ohio State clubbed Illinois in college football today, 52-22. Given Ohio's importance as a swing state this year, the Buckeye victory could be a big one for Obama. Economists have found that a win by the local team in the week before an election can boost the percentage of the vote for the incumbent by approximately 1.5 percentage points.

Let's not forget Florida. They won today also, 14-7 over Missouri. Not a dominant victory, but a win is a win, which is what Democrats will be hoping to say on Tuesday.