… Science is full of epistemic uncertainty. Circling the unknowns, inching toward truth through argument and experiment is how progress is made. But science is often expected to be a monolithic collection of all the right answers. As a result, some scientists — and the politicians, policymakers and journalists who […] Read more »
Pollsters got it wrong in the 2016 election. Now they want another shot.
… A cocktail of problems led to the polling misses of 2016. … But while pollsters received the majority of the blame, perhaps more condemnation ought to have fallen on the forecasters, who turn pollsters’ data into predictions. CONT. Rob Arthur, MIT Technology Review Read more »
How do pollsters predict UK general election results?
FT data journalist John Burn-Murdoch explains how researchers such as YouGov use MRP, or multi-level regression post-stratification polling, as the best way of showing how big national polls translate at the local level – and to predict who will win the most seats. Financial Times Read more »
Moneyball, meet politics: Could VAR settle arguments about candidate strength?
In the era of data and metrics and models in political analysis, at least one question still remains: How do we quantify the strength of individual candidates? Arguing over whether a candidate or incumbent is good or bad is an age-old tradition in the political media and among party operatives. […] Read more »
Citizens need to know numbers
… Numbers are often used to persuade rather than inform, statistical literacy needs to be improved, and so surely we need more statistics courses in schools and universities? Well, yes, but this should not mean more of the same. After years of researching and teaching statistical methods, I am not […] Read more »
Recent Books and Journals Articles in Public Opinion, Survey Methods, Survey Statistics, Big Data, Data Science, and User Experience Research
Welcome to the 10th edition of this column on recent books and journal articles in the field of public opinion, survey methods, survey statistics, Big Data, data science and user experience research. Yes, it is the 10th anniversary of this paper series started in March 2009. In the first article, […] Read more »