If I Had A Spreadsheet

I Know It's Cheaper To Fund An Op-ed Columnist Than A Team Of Reporters, But I Think It Confuses The Mission Of What These Great Journalistic Brands Are About.

I View My Role Now As Providing More Of A Macro-level Skepticism, Rather Than Saying This Poll Is Good Or This Poll Is Evil.

I Think People Feel Like There Are All These Things In Our Lives That We Don't Really Have Control Over.

We Look At All The Polls, Not Just The Gallup Poll. So, It's Kind Of Like If You Have, You Know, Four Out Of Five Doctors Agree That Reducing Cholesterol Reduces Your Risk Of A Heart Attack, Gallup Is Like The Fifth Doctor.

Expert Estimates Of Probability Are Often Off By Factors Of Hundreds Or Thousands. [...] I Used To Be Annoyed When The Margin Of Error Was High In A Forecasting Model That I Might Put Together. Now I View It As Perhaps The Single Most Important Piece Of Information That A Forecaster Provides. When We Publish A Forecast On Fivethirtyeight, I Go To Great Lengths To Document The Uncertainty Attached To It, Even If The Uncertainty Is Sufficiently Large That The Forecast Won't Make For Punchy Headlines.