October Discussion Dinner: The (Pseudo?) Science of Political Forecasting
Details
Just in time for the upcoming presidential election we'll take on political forecasting. There are endless websites dedicated to it, like the popular NY Time 538 blog (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com), and we know that political campaigns spend large sums on it for planning their strategies. But is there any science behind all of this? Do these numbers mean anything? And, ultimately, are these self-fulfilling prophecies that end up influencing the result of elections? There are 2 recent books that shed interesting light on the subject: "The victory Lab" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030795479X/) and "The Signal and the Noise." (http://www.amazon.com/The-Signal-Noise-Predictions-Fail-but/dp/159420411X) And, of course, we'll know on November 6th. As per this meetup's tradition though, we will do our best to stay away from discussing politics.
A note on the fee to attend this meetup. First of all, if you are a NYC Skeptics member we will refund your fee or, if you prefer, email us and we will RSVP for you. As we previously explained, the fee is meant to encourage attendees to join NYC Skeptics as paying members, which can attend for free. We encourage all non-members to join by going to http://nycskeptics.org/join . Also, the fee will be refunded if you join within 3 months of paying for a meetup. NOTE: The fee will not be refunded if you cancel within 48 hours of the meetup.