Dumbest tweet of the year award goes to Jonathan Martin at Politico, by @DavidOAtkins

Dumbest tweet of the year award goes to Jonathan Martin at Politico

by David Atkins

Words fail:



If anyone out there is stupid enough to believe that Nate Silver has "special sauce" beyond averaging polls, weighting them slightly for house effects, and adding some economic and past electorate performance data, then they probably aren't smart enough to be reading Nate Silver or any of the other statisticians with mathematical models similar to Silver's. The statistical models show Obama likely to win, just like the conservative Real Clear Politics average of polls shows an Obama win of 290-248 based on current data after forcing tossups into the column of the candidate currently ahead. It's not that complicated.

Martin's incredibly stupid tweet also refers to an even more mind-boggling article stating that Silver's credibility would be tarnished if Romney were to win, apparently because 25% probabilities never actually occur in nature, and because if Romney were to suddenly surge in the polls it somehow wouldn't show up in Nate's model.

If the journalists at Politico are this dumb when it comes to simplistic electoral probabilities, then it's no wonder they can't understand the fraudulent nature of Romney's tax "plan", much less the intricacies of climate change models.

The D.C. bubble is filled with the dumbest people pretending to be smart this side of a Davos conference.


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