7pm in Fayerweather 310:
Why is it more rational to vote than to answer surveys (but it used to be the other way around)? How does this explain why we should stop overreacting to swings in the polls? How does modern polling work? What are the factors that predict election outcomes? What’s good and bad about political prediction markets? How do we measure political polarization, and what does it imply for our politics? We will discuss these and other issues in American politics and more generally how we can use data science to learn about the social world.
People can read the following articles ahead of time if they would like.
Short:https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/midterms-blue-wave-statistics-data-analysis.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/08/why_trump_clinton_won_t_be_a_landslide.htmlhttps://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/dont-be-fooled-by-clinton-trump-polling-bounces.htmlhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/moneybox/2016/07/why_political_betting_markets_are_failing.html
Longer:http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/what_learned_in_2016_5.pdfhttp://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/swingers.pdf