{"id":14064,"date":"2012-11-06T07:25:49","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T13:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=14064"},"modified":"2012-11-06T07:25:49","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T13:25:49","slug":"the-chunky-numbers-that-underlie-electoral-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/06\/the-chunky-numbers-that-underlie-electoral-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"The chunky numbers that underlie electoral statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just wanted to show you this histogram.  I love this histogram because it demonstrates the underlying chunkiness of the electoral college.  This is not at all an uncommon phenomenon in nature and culture, even though we tend to conceptualize and model things as nice curvy well behaved lines.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2012\/11\/EV_histogram_today_5nov2012_8pm.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2012\/11\/EV_histogram_today_5nov2012_8pm.png?resize=500%2C375\" alt=\"\" title=\"EV_histogram_today_5nov2012_8pm\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-14065\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This also shows the underlying pattern from which people like Nate Silver get these percentages of who is likely to win.  Each little chunkette (one electoral vote = one chunkette) of data on this histogram is a possible coin flip with a coin with two heads or two tails.  You put all the biased coins in a bag, randomly pick one, and ask &#8220;does this coin have two heads or two tails?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The source of this histogram is <a href=\"http:\/\/election.princeton.edu\/2012\/11\/06\/presidential-final-prediction-2012-election-eve-final\/\">here<\/a>. Hat tip to <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2012\/11\/05\/final-abc-wapo-poll-is-out\/#comment-97702\">commenter mdb.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just wanted to show you this histogram. I love this histogram because it demonstrates the underlying chunkiness of the electoral college. This is not at all an uncommon phenomenon in nature and culture, even though we tend to conceptualize and model things as nice curvy well behaved lines. This also shows the underlying pattern &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/06\/the-chunky-numbers-that-underlie-electoral-statistics\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The chunky numbers that underlie electoral statistics<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-3EQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}