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posted by on Saturday November 19 2016, @01:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the simon-says-campaign-in-pennsylvania dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @07:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @07:58PM (#429579)

    Are you really going to try to downplay corruption just because it had an unknown effect on the amount of votes Sanders received?

  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:10PM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:10PM (#429586) Journal

    Are you really going to try to downplay corruption just because it had an unknown effect

    Is this an actual question? How can it be corruption if it had no effect? Or a counter-corrupting effect? All you are saying is that you don't know. You are saying nothing. By trying to make it seem like I am saying something, you are still saying nothing. What was the algorithm the Clinton campaign used? Oh, you don't know? Was it corrupt? Maybe, you don't know. Was it inaccurate on predictions? Obviously. Why? You don't know.

    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:35PM

      by JNCF (4317) on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:35PM (#429605) Journal

      How can it be corruption if it had no effect? Or a counter-corrupting effect?

      I'm sometimes left wondering where the troll ends and the philosopher begins, Detective. Let's take one obvious and well documented example of corruption in the primary -- say, Donna Brazile giving Hillary Clinton debate questions ahead of time. Now let's make the baseless assumption that Hillary came up with a worse response ahead of time than she would have come up with on the spot. In this hypothetical would you really refuse to call the act of revealing debate questions ahead of time "corruption" simply because the effect was the opposite of what was intended? If so this would seem like an odd definition of corruption; I don't think it would even include Watergate.

      • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday November 19 2016, @11:45PM

        by Francis (5544) on Saturday November 19 2016, @11:45PM (#429694)

        He's a troll, I don't generally bother responding to him because it's a waste of my time and energy, but he's definitely a troll.

        Either that or he's got some sort of neurological impairment that prevents him from comprehending even basic facts.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:20AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:20AM (#429717)

          Either that or he's got some sort of . . .

          So let me get this straight, you do not know whether aristarchus is a troll or not?