Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Atlantic

    A Math Whiz on How to Stop Stressing About Election Forecasts

    An interview with the mathematician Jordan Ellenberg about politics, election forecasting, and how to think about the future like a pro
    by Derek Thompson Nov 02, 2020 6 minutes
    Source: Chip Somodevilla; Win McNamee / Getty / The Atlantic

    Approximately 50 times a day, I visit a handful of presidential election–forecasting websites to remind myself of Joe Biden’s chances of becoming the next president. Honestly, I’m not sure why I do it to myself.

    Am I using this information to make up my mind? Please; Election Day is tomorrow, and my mind has been made up for more than 1,450 days. Am I seeking more information to shape my advice to other people? No; I would, in any probabilistic scenario, advise everybody to vote, specifically for the person endorsed by my employer. Am I trying to calibrate the anxiety I should feel, right now, about an event over which I have almost no control? Yep, that sounds right.

    And yet, when the results are in, I won’t have any way of knowing if the forecasts were a useful guide for my anxiety. For instance, the smartest modelers out there say Biden has roughly a 90 percent chance of winning the presidential election. If Biden wins, it won’t necessarily

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Atlantic

    The Atlantic4 min read
    Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
    Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
    The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
    The Americans Who Need Chaos
    This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why peop
    The Atlantic4 min read
    KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago
    My KitchenAid stand mixer is older than I am. My dad bought the white-enameled machine 35 years ago, during a brief first marriage. The bits of batter crusted into its cracks could be from the pasta I made yesterday or from the bread he made then. I

    Related Books & Audiobooks