Hmm, doesn’t mergers/acquisitions defeat the purpose of the internet? Isn’t 538.com better as a stand alone than being a single blog on the NYT news portal? I suppose that time will tell … but on this day, I am sad to read that the simple URL of http://www.fivethirtyeight.com is no more.
Though, Nate Silver does get a dig in on the McLaughlin Group in his first NYT post posted on Wednesday:
Politics is not the only place where a poor understanding of probability and statistics can color news coverage. In baseball, “intangibles” like clubhouse chemistry are sometimes treated as being more important than batting average or E.R.A. But you wouldn’t find very many sportswriters who would claim, in a game in which the Yankees were trailing Boston, 7-2, in the ninth inning, that it was “too close to call,” … That’s the equivalent of what those pundits were doing on “The McLaughlin Group.”
Well said. And it reminds me that I like politics in part because of the math. And i’ve followed 538.com (umm, how many times did i read the comments for the discussions and debates below? too many to recall) for the math that it applies so astutely. I am confident that that will carry over to the NYT blogs, even with the fancier graphics that the paper offers.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 