Accuracy of Predictions

There’s very little checking done of the accuracy of the prediction of pundits, which is a major reason I avoid even hearing what they have to say.

One exception to this rule is Nate Silver and his crew at FiveThirtyEight.com. They’ve just published an analysis of as many of their predictions as possible. It’s worth reading, just for the demonstration of doing an analysis in the first place.

I suspect most readers/viewers of the news find probability hard to understand, and pundits generally don’t do that. People generally don’t want to hear probabilities; they’d prefer certainty. I have not done one, but I suspect a survey would show that people prefer a certain answer to an accurate-but-uncertain one.

So I like the headline: When We Say 70 Percent, It Really Means 70 Percent. Well, actually 71%. The things they gave a probability of 70% to happened 71% of the time. Not all percentages matched that accuracy, but it’s overall quite good.

More importantly, it tends to demonstrate the nature of prediction and the value of having evaluations. This makes me tend away from TV and radio as news sources and toward written sources in which I can check the sources. And, of course, toward written articles that actually cite sources.

Note: Check my source for this article!