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Submitted via IRC for chromas
The Clinton presidential campaign used a complex computer algorithm called Ada to assist in many of the most important decisions during the race.
According to aides, a raft of polling numbers, public and private, were fed into the algorithm, as well as ground-level voter data meticulously collected by the campaign. Once early voting began, those numbers were factored in, too.
What Ada did, based on all that data, aides said, was run 400,000 simulations a day of what the race against Trump might look like. A report that was spit out would give campaign manager Robby Mook and others a detailed picture of which battleground states were most likely to tip the race in one direction or another — and guide decisions about where to spend time and deploy resources.
Of course, the results are only as good as the data. Since the outcome of the election was different than most poll predictions, it seems like Ada may have had a Garbage In, Garbage Out problem.
(Score: 3, Touché) by jmoschner on Saturday November 19 2016, @03:30PM
People tend to forget that a 98% chance of winning is still a 2% chance to lose.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Saturday November 19 2016, @05:00PM
But real events are not statistical models. If we went back in time 99 times to Nov 7th we would not find that Clinton won 98 times, Trump once. We would find that Trump won with a landslide victory 100% of the time. Trumps chance of a victory was always 100%. The polls just try to approximate this number. So, the polls were off by 98%. That shows a really really bad polling method.