Predicting the Presidency

More or Less

BBC

News Commentary, Science, Mathematics, News

4.6 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2012

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nate Silver tells us who will win the 2012 US election - and how he knows.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:04.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to
0:08.0	BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts.
0:12.0	Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service,
0:17.0	your weekly dose of mathematical medicine.
0:20.0	I'm Tim Harford. This week's prescription is a little different.
0:24.0	Today we're meeting two stars of the statistical world.
0:27.0	One is a 34 year old New Yorker called Nate Silver,
0:30.0	who's just published a book, The Signal and the Noise,
0:33.0	The Art and Science of Prediction.
0:35.0	The other was an English Presbyterian minister who died in 1761.
0:40.0	His name was the Reverend Thomas Bayes.
0:43.0	Nate Silver says he can predict the result of the forthcoming
0:46.0	US presidential election.
0:48.0	And Thomas Bayes? Well, Thomas Bayes helps him do it.
0:52.0	Let's go back to 2008.
0:54.0	Nate Silver had already achieved some success forecasting
0:57.0	baseball results, but as Senators McCain and Obama
1:00.0	slugged it out for the presidency, Silver switched from predicting
1:03.0	batting averages to votes.
1:05.0	He managed to enrage half of Chicago last year by correctly
1:08.0	predicting the White Sox World Series winners of 2005
	...

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