… If a statistics guru can be a rock star, Silver surely is. But even rock stars have bad days. Silver, 38, had a run of them a few months ago, when it became obvious that his consistent early dismissals of Donald Trump’s chances to be the Republican presidential nominee were flat-out wrong. …
After it became clear that Trump would win the nomination, Silver apologized in a long post. And he explained that “we made a big mistake.” The mistake was allowing his predictions to be based, at least partly, on the very thing that he has criticized all along: educated guesses. …
Last week, in his Upper West Side newsroom … Silver talked about learning that lesson the hard way — and about the next hurdle. CONT.
Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post