Nate Silver, the
statistics guru who now writes for the NY
TIMES, is well aware of the fact that a sizable share of his readership
consists of freaked out junkies like myself who crave not merely daily but
hourly analyses of the upcoming presidential election. Since he rigorously confines himself to an
analysis of polling data, eschewing speculation or political commentary, he is
on some days hard put to come up with something new to satisfy our cravings. Today, for example, having nothing much
in the way of new data to crunch, he devoted
an entire column to analyzing the extremely outré circumstances under which the entire election could
turn on the results in the Congressional District that includes Omaha, Nebraska. Nebraska is one of only two states [the other
is Maine] that award electoral votes by Congressional District, and in 2008, in
that overwhelmingly Republican state, Obama actually snatched a single
electoral vote from the sea of red by carrying that district by a single
percentage point. The odds of the
election turning on that electoral vote, by the way, are apparently a thousand
to one, but the Nebraska Republicans, stung by the insult to their purity, have
rearranged the district so that it is unlikely to occur again.
Another wonkish topic
Silver spent some time discussing is the tendency of some polling firms systematically
to tilt more toward one side or the other than the other firms that are doing
polling. Rasmussen, for example, can be
relied upon to tilt Republican. This
tendency is called by statistics nerds "the house effect" [for
reasons a quick Google search failed to disclose.] It is not that any firms actually cook their
data. Rather, the technique they use for
forming their sample or making their contacts has built in biases one way or
the other.
For example, pollsters
regularly distinguish between the universe of Registered Voters [RVs] and the
universe of Likely Voters [LVs]. A poll
of RVs will tilt more to the Democrats than a poll of LVs, because the
sub-populations strongest in their support for the Democrats [Hispanics, young
people] are also less likely to turn out and vote than the sub-populations
favoring the Republicans [rich people, old people, white people]. Silver has no patience with those who average
polls of RVs with polls of LVs. There is
also a good deal of disagreement among pollsters as to how one identifies LVs.
There are other sources
of bias, or a House Effect. Rasmussen
leans Republican in part because it calls people only on landlines. But young people, who tend to favor Obama,
are more likely to be reachable only on cell phones.
Since I obsess a good
deal about these matters, I got to thinking last night at one a.m. about other
examples of House Effects. One that
occurred to me concerns my life-long tendency to daydream. As readers of my Memoir will know, I spend a
goodly part of my waking hours in my head, daydreaming. Sometimes I daydream about having magical
powers, with which I correct much that is wrong in the world. I also do my share of daydreaming about
sexual conquests, of course. And a not
inconsiderable portion of my daydreaming is actually a form of work, in which I
give extended lectures to imaginary audiences as a way of thinking through a theoretical problem. On occasion, I write imaginary reviews of
books I have published.
I have noticed that my
daydreams exhibit a significant House Effect.
They tend to biased in my direction.
There are limits, of course. I do
not write reviews of my books that begin, "Not since Immanuel Kant burst
upon the scene has an author so stunned the philosophical world ...", but
the reviews do tend to be somewhat more enthusiastic about the arguments of
which I am singularly proud, and unusually forgiving of such shortcomings as I
am willing to acknowledge.
You might think that such
self-regarding daydreaming would, from the standpoint of a utilitarian
calculation, be a net minus, since the momentary pleasure from the imagined review
would be more than compensated for by the eventual pain of realizing that it
was only a daydream. But like Walter Mitty, I am undeterred by such
hard-eyed calculations. I have long
since become inured to the disappointments of reality, while remaining
enraptured by the enticements of fantasy.
There is one odd counter-example,
however, As I am now only fifteenth
months from my eightieth birthday, I have begun musing on the possibility of
throwing myself a big party on December 27, 2013. I thought maybe I would hold it in Paris
[which would have the effect of keeping the attendance within manageable
limits]. I would invite everyone: family, friends, former students, colleagues,
everyone who reads this blog. We would
take over an entire restaurant in Paris and spend the evening celebrating -- me.
But somehow, the prospect does not enchant.
I think the problem is
like that attendant upon the fantasy of being present at your own funeral. You can count on the speeches at the funeral being
encomia -- de mortuis nil nisi bonum
and all that -- but the problem is that you would be dead. An eightieth birthday bash carries with it
the suggestion that you are pretty well finished and are just putting a cap on
it.
I guess I will wait until
I am ninety.
3 comments:
As I can handle only a small amount per week of campaign speculation, I almost checked out of this post early on. So glad I went on. Love the imaginary lectures and book reviews. in which I too indulge. As for birthday celebrations, it isn't a question of 80 OR 90. You could do BOTH!
I'm in.
When my grandfather died, the minister who did the eulogy before he was put in the ground or "laid to rest" used my name instead of his. His middle name was Harley and mine is Harris but otherwise our first and last names are the same. So at his funeral the minister went on and on "as we lay to rest John Harris Doe" and continued the using the name over and over. There I was watching my own name being used to bury someone else. Sometimes you don't have to daydream about such things, they really happen. Annd I can only comment "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated". Not an original comment but in my case it really happened.
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