MetaFilter posts tagged with fivethirtyeight

Put your money where your mouth is

DynamiteToast — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 08:33:01 -0800

Intrade is a Prediction Market, where you make predictions by buying and selling shares on the outcome of real-world events. These events are always defined on Intrade as a YES/NO proposition. Shares are bought at some point between $0.00 and $10.00, based on whether the buyer believes the event will or won't occur (which correspond to $10.00 and $0.00 respectively). Most popular propositions at the moment are election related, though this week the market for the Best Picture opened. Generally, Intrade garners attention for it's mix of clear prediction values (a multiplication of 10 by any given "price" easily gets you to an option's percentage chance of happening) and market driven prices which allow it to react more quickly than polls do to current events such as debates. However, earlier this week something odd happened in it's presidential market.

At several points on Tuesday and early Wednesday, what appeared to be a single trader bought a large number of Mr. Romney’s shares at Intrade, at one point boosting Mr. Romney’s chances to about 49 percent from 41 percent over the span of a few minutes. The betting patterns (Previously) echo similar ones in the pricing of John McCain and Mr. Obama’s stock at Intrade late in the 2008 cycle.

FiveThirtyEight rips apart Standard and Poor's ratings

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:14:09 -0800

Nate Silver: Why Standard & Poor’s Ratings Are Substandard and Porous

Pencils down.

Rhaomi — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:45:11 -0800

It's Election Day in America, and as is so often the case in this fickle land, the results of the 2010 midterm elections are up in the air. Although President Obama's party is expected to suffer significant losses, record numbers of districts remain competitive, and even minute errors in polling could mean the difference between a historic Republican landslide and an unexpectedly robust Democratic defense. At stake are control of not just the Senate and House, but myriad state and local offices, many of which will play key roles in the dynamics of the 2012 presidential race -- and, more subtly but no less crucially, the once-in-a-decade congressional redistricting process. Much uncertainty surrounds the behavior of the electorate -- how many will turn out, and how informed will they be? To help move those statistics in the right direction, look inside for voter guides, national and state fact checkers, and an assortment of other resources to keep tabs on as the results roll in. Factchecking Sites National: PolitiFact.com (Pants On Fire! Guide, Seven Key Distortions, subject directory) FactCheck.org (Down-to-the-Wire Deceptions, Guide to 2010 lobbying groups) State (including several local branches of PolitiFact): Alabama - Arizona - Delaware - Florida - Georgia - New Mexico - Ohio - Oregon - Rhode Island - South Carolina - Texas - Virginia - Virginia 2 - Washington - Wisconsin Voter Resources Project Vote Smart's VoteEasy - Identifies local candidates and lets you auto-rank them by policy stance in a nifty Flash interface Ballot Measures Database - A compendium of ballot measures from every state in the country Google Voter Info - Uses your street address to pinpoint your polling place on Google Maps Many state chapters of the League of Women Voters offer nonpartisan guides to local candidates and issues. Same-Day Registrations Even if you've procrastinated, it might not be too late to vote. Nine states allow for voter registration on Election Day: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, as well as the District of Columbia. North Dakota has no voter registration system. Sites to Watch Streaming coverage: CNN, ABC, C-SPAN FiveThirtyEight's Hour-by-Hour, District-by-District Election Guide - Breaks competitive House races down by likelihood of party switch and lists them by poll closing time; "magic numbers" let you project at a glance roughly how the night is going as individual races are called. See also their final, in-depth forecasts for the House, Senate, and state governorships. 270toWin.com - Offers interactive maps of the House and Senate races for you to plot out your own predictions and see how the final seat numbers would end up. Intrade - Watch a political stock market react in real-time as the night unfolds. (And, just for fun, how many of the 75 Senate candidates on today's ballots can you name?)