This post was jointly written by a guest contributor to ScIU, Rashid CJ Marcano Rivera @Rashido
The election is almost here and the election forecasters are in full swing. As of October 23rd, the Economist gives Biden a 92% chance of winning, and FiveThirtyEight has him winning 88 out of 100 “simulated” elections. How should we interpret these claims?
If you have a coin and you flip it a thousand times, and it lands on heads 500 times and tails 500 times then you may infer it has a 50% probability of landing on heads and a 50% probability tails. Sounds simple, except, we’re not going to run this election thousands of times, we’re only going to run it once.
Ultimately, the election has a determinate outcome. Either Biden will win, or Trump will win. Hypothetically, with perfect information, we should be able to predict exactly what happens. However, we do not have that information, so instead we have to develop our best guess using the available information. Or best guesses — there are many forecasting models and they don’t all make the same predictions. (more…)