FiveThirtyEight.com's Nate Silver on life post-election
Known as a superstar statistician whose blog gave Democrats daily data that calmed them down last fall, Silver was the keynote speaker at SXSWi Sunday. Afterward, he spoke to CNET News.
AUSTIN, Texas--If there was one name that stood out on the agenda of speakers at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival here this week, it was famed FiveThirtyEight.com blogger Nate Silver.
Known as a statistical wunderkind, his models predicted the final outcome of the 2008 presidential election to within .4 percent of the final popular vote. But more important to many Democrats who had their hopes for electoral victory dashed by George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, FiveThirtyEight.com--which got its name from the total number of electoral votes available--was able to provide daily affirmation that Barack Obama was really winning, even when many were tempted to believe he would be overcome by Sen. John McCain.
Silver was SXSWi's keynote speaker on Sunday, and he and interviewer Stephen Baker of Business Week went onstage in front of an audience of about 2,000 fans, most of whom were there to hear Silver talk about the secret sauce behind his hugely popular blog.
What many might not know is that Silver first came to prominence not in the political realm, but in baseball, where he authored Baseball Prospectus, a well-regarded baseball statistics site. Many might see the connection between baseball and politics as far-fetched, but to people like Silver, it's a very direct path.
Still, before starting FiveThirtyEight.com, he wasn't entirely a political neophyte. Silver had already begun to make a name for himself in the liberal political blogosphere with a series of data-rich posts on DailyKos. When he began to recognize some significant holes in the national polling establishment, he decided to step in to fill the void.
After his keynote interview, Silver sat down with CNET News and talked about the election, how his site got started, and more about the philosophical similarities between baseball and politics.
Q: Many Democrats were emotionally tied to what you were doing, in the sense that your data kept them calm during the election. Did your own numbers keep you calm?
Nate Silver: Yeah, I think so. I'm just one of those people that likes to try and dissect a problem and once you started to dissect, some days you feel better about it. If I ever get cancer, the first thing I'll probably do is go on the Web and collect a bunch of data about different survival rates. I just feel better about things when I do them that way. It's a nerdy kind of thing to do.
Q: We were able to get up every day and look at the data and see what was going on. And this is not something you could do because it was your own data. How your own data affect how you felt about what was going on?
Silver: I wouldn't be frustrated by it if McCain or Obama picked up points on a particular day. Sometimes you get frustrated if you know that something you did reveals something about your model. When something doesn't feel right, and you go and make changes. And we made a lot of changes over the course of the campaign where, even as recently as two weeks before the election, we were tweaking little parameters, and what started out as a pretty simple system--taking weighted averages of polls--became much more complex over time. But, yeah, we were never saying we had the perfect answer. We were always trying to improve things as we went along.
Q: The blog had an overt liberal position, but you always said the statistics were objective. What kind of feedback, if any, did you get from conservatives?
Silver: We had a pretty good balance. We had probably about a 2-1 ratio in terms of liberal versus conservative readers, based on the comment threads. Now that we're not in an election, I think it's swung more toward the liberal side, both in terms of my writing and what people are reading about.
We try and be fair. That's the main thing, we try and be forthright. There's so much commentary from conservatives, also from liberals, that is just entirely disingenuous about certain things. It's a lot of cheerleading and cherry-picking of data. We're trying to present a case that by and large is a liberal's case, because it's my case. It's how I see the world. But we're trying to use data to do it where a lot of people just make bad arguments.
Q: How helpful was it to FiveThirtyEight.com to have the Minnesota election and the Mississippi runoff to keep buzz going after the election?
Silver: Definitely the Minnesota race, and also Alaska took awhile to resolve. But we were going to lose a lot of our traffic no matter what. Especially because we had had people clicking on the site 10 times a day or 10 times an hour waiting for the polling updates. So, those kind of eased the transition, especially Minnesota. But we're now at a point where I'm in some ways enjoying writing the blog more now because now there's all these other things I want to talk about.
Q: Was that the plan for after the election?
Silver: The plan was to do a little bit more with the Congress, where we started to analyze Congressional voting patterns, and we're doing a little bit of that. But my background is in economics, and fortunately, most of the major issues relate to economics, things like the stimulus and the bailout. But health care is all about economics, and so is cap-and-trade environmental policy. And so I think I'm fortunate that the issues that are most important now are things I can talk about.
National security and "values" issues, those are less amenable to the quantitative analysis that I do. So we're talking more about policy and less about politics than I expected.
Q: What are your traffic numbers now, and how does that compare to the campaign?
Silver: We're at about 800,000 uniques per month, and in October and November, we peaked at about 2.2 million. With visits, the difference is larger, because people were clicking so repeatedly on the site. But basically we're doing about the same now as we were in August, just before the conventions. You would like to still be getting 2 million visits on a particular day, but of course you're not going to get that. A lot of people tune out after the election.
Q: The artist Shepard Fairey never imagined that his Obama "Hope" poster would be such an icon. Did you expect your site to have as big an effect as it did?
Silver: No, I'm a pretty confident guy, and I thought that this is something I'm doing in part because people aren't doing it that well, but I didn't think there would be this kind of scale. You discover that Web traffic is very non-linear, and it's viral. You don't go from 1,000 to 2,000. You go from 1,000 to 10,000 and from 10,000 to 100,000. You have this multiple happening, kind of four times, on a logarithmic scale, and I didn't expect that. But there's a lot of luck here.
Q: What do you attribute your success to?
Silver: Being in the right place at the right time. Also, it's working hard, and having an interesting product. But that just gets you in the door. So from that point of view, a lot was luck. It's some of the media we did, or certain predictions we made, like for the North Carolina primary, where we said Obama would win comfortably, and he did, and a guy at Newsweek did an interview based on that. Especially with the media, it all kind of feeds back on itself, where your qualification to do media is doing other media.
Q: What was your process for working on your statistical models?
Silver: There's no one step that's all that complicated. You're building it bit by bit. It started when I was coming back from a trip to New Orleans and was in the airport, and thought, "Why hasn't anyone collected all these general election polls and seen whether Clinton or Obama is doing better against McCain?" That was the first stroke of insight. But you start doing that, and then I became frustrated by the fact that there are some polls that I knew weren't very good, but they were getting as much weight as good ones, so it became going back and seeing who's been most accurate over time. So it's literally been one step at a time. A lot of it is you sitting there at 4 in the morning with a can of Red Bull and a data-processing program.
Q: What software are you using?
Silver: I use Microsoft Excel. I use Excel in ways that it shouldn't probably be used, but it's a pretty flexible program if you know how to trick it out a little bit. And for the hard-core data processing, you need something else, and I use Stata.
Q: How are political campaigns and baseball connected?
Silver: There is kind of the same rhythm to political campaigns and baseball seasons. You have to be patient to appreciate it. In political campaigns that last two years, you have certain primaries, like Iowa and New Hampshire, that are very important. And two conventions, three or four debates, and the vice presidents being picked. Collectively, those took up about 20 days, whereas the campaign lasted about 700 days.
So there's not much high-impact stuff, and you have to follow it every single day, and understand how little threads become big threads, and how the picture develops very slowly. That's similar to baseball, which has a long season.
Q: There's also a partisan thing, like Yankees versus Red Sox and Democrats versus Republicans, right?
Silver: I think there is something to that. Political affiliations are kind of like picking sports teams. And that's why when we are expressing a political point of view we try not to make it personal. Some people think those who think differently than they do politically are evil people. That's not the most productive way of looking at the world.
Q: Were pollsters calling cell phone users?
Silver: At the end of the day, I think about half the firms were. Most of the national polling firms, like NBC/Wall Street Journal, and I think ABC News and Pew Research were. The better-financed polls are starting to do that. But it's going to become more and more important, because it's not like the thirtysomething or twentysomething generations are going to feel the need to have landlines. This is a real problem for the polling firms in the long term.
Why You Can Trust CNET 9 Ways You Can Help Yourself See Better at Night While Driving
After daylight savings time ends, many of us will have a dark commute home. Here are some ways to improve your night vision for driving.
Daylight savings time is almost over, and that means more driving while it's dark. The fact that we lose an hour of daylight in fall may sound insignificant, but the end of daylight saving time results in a 16% increase in collisions with deer, according to a 2022 study. An increase in fatal car crashes following the end of daylight savings time was also observed in a published medical study from 1995 that reviewed data between 1987 and 1991.
With the extra hour of darkness during commute times, we need to adjust our habits to improve our ability to see at night. Learn why driving in the dark can be hazardous and how to see better and drive more safely after dark.
Why driving in the dark is harder
Simply put, it's harder to see in low light. Other issues make things worse, like headlight glare and interior cab lighting.
In the US, newer vehicles have brighter headlights, causing more glare and afterimages. Technology like LED bulbs and laser emitters make driving on the road at night akin to a strobe attack.
Some drivers inherently have a harder time adjusting to low light, such as older people and anyone with vision problems like nearsightedness, astigmatism or glaucoma.
9 tips for safer driving at night
Luckily, there are a few simple ways to reduce vision problems when driving after dark.
Keep your windshield clean to reduce glare
Glare can increase when your windshield is dirty, as dirt disperses light. Certain treatments, like rain repellent, can also increase glare on your windshield at night. Keep your windshield as clear as possible to reduce glare and help visibility. AAA says a dirty windshield can also limit or obstruct your field of vision, and it recommends aiming for cleaning your windshield at least once a week.
Keep your headlights clean
The Mayo Clinic says you can also help increase visibility by ensuring your headlights are free from dirt and debris. Checking for clean headlights is especially important if you live in a dusty region or are in an area where hitting bugs is common.
Use high beams when necessary
Be sure to use your high beams on rural roads near forests or fields, and as the National Safety Council recommends, on longer or wider stretches of road. High beams can help you see deer in these instances, but avoid using high beams in bad weather like rain or fog, as it can reduce visibility. Turn off high beams when going up hills or around bends to avoid shining high beams in other drivers' eyes.
Don't look directly at oncoming headlights
It may be instinctive to look directly at a flash of oncoming headlights coming over the hill or around a corner, but practice averting your gaze. Looking into bright headlights can temporarily impair your vision, and may also leave afterimages, making it harder to see once the vehicle has passed.
Check headlight alignment during car inspections
The Mayo Clinic also recommends working with your mechanic to ensure headlights are correctly aimed. Wear and tear on your car can cause misalignment, and some cars are manufactured with misaligned headlights. US laws don't require manufacturers to test alignment after the headlights are installed, according to NBC News. The result can be devastating glare for other nighttime drivers, plus reduced visibility for you.
Dim your interior lights
Interior lights should always be off or dimmed when driving at night. They make your eyes more used to light, which can reduce your night vision (our eyes typically take a few minutes to adjust to darkness). If your interior lights are on to help you (or a passenger) see something inside your vehicle, it may add to the existing distractions. Interior lights are also one more light source to reflect off your windshield.
Keep your eyeglasses clean
Like dirt on a windshield, smudges on your glasses can disperse light and add to glare problems. Make sure to clean your eyewear properly, using a cloth made for eyeglasses, warm water or moisturizer-free mild dish soap, according to Heartland Optical. Wiping your glasses on your shirt may be a common practice, it can also introduce extra dirt and scratch lenses, obscuring vision further.
Read more: https://www.cnet.com/health/personal-care/best-places-to-buy-glasses-online/ Best Places to Buy Eyeglasses Online
Wear the right eyeglasses
Keep up on those optometrist appointments so your doctor can confirm you're wearing the correct prescription. Also, you can look into anti-reflective lenses, which have a coating that decreases reflective light. Avoid eyeglass styles that obstruct peripheral vision.
Other options include night driving glasses, which commonly have yellow lenses designed to reduce glare from headlights. Be sure to talk to your doctor before using them; some professionals think they could make your night vision worse instead of better.
Read more: Are You Squinting Right Now? It's Time to Get Your Vision Checked
Keep yourself alert for driving
Even small time changes can leave us feeling jet-lagged. Daylight saving time can throw off your circadian rhythm (that internal clock that tells you when to go to bed and when to stay up), according to Northwestern Medicine, and being tired can lead to blurred vision.
Adjusting to the end of daylight saving time can help you be more alert for driving. Check out our guide to recalibrating your internal alarm clock.
Personal Care Guides
Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Nov. 4, #512
Here are some hints — and the answers — for Connections No. 512 for Nov. 4.
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Read on for the Connections answer.
Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.
Need the answers for the New York Times Connections puzzle? To me, Wordle is more of a vocabulary test, but Connections is more of a brainteaser. You're given 16 words and asked to put them into four groups that are somehow connected. Sometimes they're obvious, but game editor Wyna Liu knows how to trick you by using words that can fit into more than one group. Read on for today's Connections hints and answers.
There's also news in the Connections world. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one it's had for some time for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. And players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.
Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time
How to play Connections
Playing is easy. Winning is hard. Look at the 16 words and mentally assign them to related groups of four. Click on the four words you think go together. The groups are coded by color, though you don't know what goes where until you see the answers. The yellow group is the easiest, then green, then blue, and purple is the toughest. Look at the words carefully and think about related terms. Sometimes the connection has to do with just a part of the word. Once, four words were grouped because each started with the name of a rock band, including "Rushmore" and "Journeyman."
Read more: New NYT Connections Game for Sports Fans Lets Players Swing for the Fences
Hints for today's Connections groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today's Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest, yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Deck out
Green group hint: What makes you stand out
Blue group hint: Bureau is one
Purple group hint: Wont is another one
Answers for today's Connections groups
Yellow group: Equip
Green group: Individuality
Blue group: Furniture
Purple group: Words with apostrophes removed
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today's Connections answers?
The completed NYT Connections puzzle for Nov. 4, 2024.
The yellow words in today's Connections
The theme is equip. The four answers are furnish, outfit, provision and stock.
The green words in today's Connections
The theme is individuality. The four answers are being, character, ego and self.
The blue words in today's Connections
The theme is furniture. The four answers are chest, console, vanity and wardrobe.
The purple words in today's Connections
The theme is words with apostrophes removed. The four answers are cant, id, shell and were.
Gaming Guides
Why You Can Trust CNET Should You Rinse Pasta After Cooking? We Asked an Italian Chef
There are plenty of pasta-making mistakes and misnomers swirling about. We asked a pro chef to name the biggest offenses.
Rinsing pasta after cooking may not be the special trick we all thought it was.
If you're running your pasta under water after it's done cooking, we know an Italian chef who would like a word. And if you think adding olive to your pasta water will keep the noodles from sticking, think again.
Americans eat roughly 20 pounds of the Italian staple per year, making it one of the most widely consumed foods by weight. All that pasta cooking has inspired some interesting theories about how to make it better, faster and easier. Unfortunately, some of our favorite pasta hacks may not be doing what we think -- or worse, compromising the finished product.
To find out if rinsing pasta is wise, and to learn about other pasta-making mistakes we might be making, we grilled Filippo de Marchi, the chef de cuisine at De Majo Restaurant & Terrace. Marchi named seven myths or mistakes that are thought to help when making penne, linguini or lasagna but have no real benefit or function.
"Cooking pasta isn't difficult at all. It's all about timing and the right water-to-pasta ratio," he says. "Don't fall into the trap of believing in pasta myths. Just trust your instincts and follow basic instructions."
Here are seven biggest pasta mistakes we're all making and why we should stop, according to someone who knows.
1. Throwing pasta against a wall to see if it sticks proves it's done
"This isn't the best way to check for doneness," says de Marchi. "The texture of the pasta can change when it hits the wall, and it doesn't give an accurate indication of whether it's properly cooked."
Instead, it's more accurate to scoop out a single strand and taste it. You'll then be able to tell if it's achieved that perfect al dente texture.
2. Adding olive oil to pasta water
Olive oil in your water isn't the best fix for sticky pasta.
Olive oil is a necessary addition to most pasta dishes, but save it for the plate.
Some folks think it will help keep pasta from sticking when added to boiling past water but "the oil just floats on top of the water and doesn't coat the pasta effectively," says de Marchi. "The best way to prevent sticking is to use plenty of water, stir the pasta regularly during the first few minutes of cooking and make sure to use the right size pot for the amount of pasta you're cooking.
"This way, the pasta has enough space to move around and cook evenly," he adds.
3. Assuming fresh pasta is always better than dry
Chef's take: FALSE
Fresh pasta has good PR but some dried pasta is just as tasty.
It's all about personal preference. Fresh, dry or frozen; chefs aren't here to dictate what your taste buds like and don't like.
"Fresh pasta has a softer texture and cooks quickly, making it perfect for delicate sauces," says the chef. "On the other hand, dry pasta has a firmer texture and holds up well with hearty or thicker sauces."
De Marchi also compares it to choosing between two great actors for a movie role. "The choice depends on the character they're portraying," he says, "just like the choice between fresh and dry pasta depends on the dish you're making."
4. Leaving the pot covered while the pasta is cooking
Stopping your pot from boiling over can be as easy as putting a wooden spoon across the top.
"Leaving the lid off the pot while the pasta is cooking is the way to go," advises de Marchi. "This prevents the water from boiling over and helps control the cooking process. Plus, it allows the steam to escape, which helps prevent the water from foaming up and making a starchy mess."
As recommended, be sure to also pick an appropriately sized pot so that your pasta cooks evenly.
5. Adding salt and thinking it will help the water boil faster
Salt won't get your pasta water boiling significantly faster.
Salt plays an important role in pasta water, but not when it comes to heat. (Impurities do change the boiling point of water, but the amount of salt you add to pasta water doesn't make a significant difference.) Rather, it's essential to add salt so that the pasta can absorb its flavor.
"If you're cooking without enough salt, the pasta can end up tasting a bit bland," warns de Marchi, whose signature dish at NHC Murano Villa is a spaghetti alle vongole. The seafood dish, which hails from the region of ocean-adjacent Venice, is a combination of vongole (typically clams, garlic, white wine and chili flakes), sea asparagus and lemon zest.
6. Draining pasta until it's completely dry
Some pasta water will help the sauce adhere.
There is a reason why salted pasta water is held in such high regard. Not only does it contain a delicious brine to enhance sauces, but it also helps the sauce adhere to the pasta itself.
"This creates a more cohesive and flavorful dish," argues De Marchi. "A little moisture can go a long way in making your pasta dish extra tasty."
7. Running cooked pasta under water before serving
Running your pasta under water removes much of the starchy goodness.
If you want to subject yourself to a potential injury via a rolling pin or wooden spoon by Nonna, run your cooked pasta under fresh water.
"This can remove the starchy coating that helps the sauce adhere to the pasta," says de Marchi. "The residual heat from the pasta helps the sauce to marry with the pasta, creating a more flavorful and cohesive dish. Think of it like a beautiful marriage -- you want the sauce and the pasta to come together and live happily ever after, not to undergo a cold shower right before serving."
8. Precooking sheets of lasagna
Not all lasagna recipes require precooked noodles.
"Precooking lasagna sheets isn't always necessary, especially if you're using a sauce with plenty of moisture," he says. "In fact, many lasagna recipes call for using the sheets directly without precooking, allowing them to absorb liquid from the sauce and cook during the baking process."
Set it, forget it and let the magic happen in the oven. Pasta is not something to overthink or stress over. Its simple preparation makes it all the more enjoyable.
