People don't have a good intuitive sense of how to weigh new information in light of what they already know. They tend to overrate it.
If you aren't taking a representative sample, you won't get a representative snapshot.
When you get into statistical analysis, you don't really expect to achieve fame. Or to become an Internet meme. Or be parodied by 'The Onion' - or be the subject of a cartoon in 'The New Yorker.' I guess I'm kind of an outlier there.
I was looking for something like baseball, where there's a lot of data and the competition was pretty low. That's when I discovered politics.
A lot of news is just entertainment masquerading as news.
All I know is that I have way more stuff that I want to write about than I possibly have time to.
If you have reason to think that yesterday's forecast went wrong, there is no glory in sticking to it.
It's a little strange to become a kind of symbol of a whole type of analysis.
Midterm elections can be dreadfully boring, unfortunately.
People gravitate toward information that implies a happier outlook for them.
People still don't appreciate how ephemeral success is.
Well, you know, you're not going to have 86 percent of Congress voted out of office.
Remember, the Congress doesn't get as many opportunities to make an impression with the public.
If there's a major foreign policy event, the President gets on TV, the Congress doesn't.
I think punditry serves no purpose.
I guess I don't like the people in politics very much, to be blunt.
Any one game in baseball doesn't tell you that much, just as any one poll doesn't tell you that much.
In baseball you have terrific data and you can be a lot more creative with it.
The problem is that when polls are wrong, they tend to be wrong in the same direction. If they miss in New Hampshire, for instance, they all miss on the same mistake.
Race is still the No. 1 determinant in every election.
