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I, Cringely

Snarfster — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:29:09 +0000

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Knowledge Problem

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Hack a Day

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The Daily Beast

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FiveThirtyEight

Snarfster — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:05:03 +0000

Pollster

Snarfster — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:28:45 +0000

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ADD Pollster

VISIT Pollster

What's this site about?

From Website ... "The maps that now appear on the front page of Pollster.com and other parts of the site allow you to quickly scan the latest trend poll trend estimates for every state in the Presidential race, as well as races for Senate and Governor (with U.S. House coming soon). The maps also allow you to navigate to our poll charts by clicking on the state.

How do I use the map to see data for Senate and Gubernatorial races?

In the upper left corner of the map, under the heading "Map Chooser, you will see a pull down menu that allows you to change the map to display races for President, Senate and Governor in 2008. The Chooser menu also includes a Find All Polls option that displays a map that takes you to index pages for each state. These index pages automatically update to include all chart pages on Pollster.com, including archived data from 2006.

Where do the numbers come from?

When you hold the mouse pointer over a state, you see a display of the latest "trend estimate" numbers from our charts of all available public polls for that race. The numbers for each candidate correspond to the most recent trend estimate -- that is the end point of the trend line that we draw for each candidate. If you click the state on the map, you will be taken to the page on Pollster.com that displays the chart and table of polls results for that race.

In most cases, the numbers are not an "average" but rather regression based trendlines. The specific methodology depends on the number of polls available.

If we have at least 8 public polls, we fit a trend line to the dots represented by each poll using a "Loess" iterative locally weighted least squares regression.
If we have between 4 and 7 polls, we fit a linear regression trend line (a straight line) to best fit the points.
If we have 3 polls or fewer, we calculate a simple average of the available surveys.

How do regression trend lines differ from simple averages?

Charles Franklin, who created the statistical routines that plot our trend lines, provided the following explanation last year:

Our trend estimate is just that, an estimate of the trends and where the race stands as of the latest data available. It is NOT a simple average of recent polling but a "local regression" estimate of support as of the most recent poll. So if you are trying to [calculate] our trend estimates from just averaging the recent polls, you won't succeed.

Here is a way to think about this: suppose the last 5 polls in a race are 25, 27, 29, 31 and 33. Which is a better estimate of where the race stands today? 29 (the mean) or 33 (the local trend)? Since support has risen by 2 points in each successive poll, our estimator will say the trend is currently 33%, not the 29% the polls averaged over the past 2 or 3 weeks during which the last 5 polls were taken. Of course real data are more noisy than my example, so we have to fit the trend in a more complicated way than the example, but the logic is the same. Our trend estimates are local regression predictions, not simple averaging. If the data have been flat for a while, the trend and the mean will be quite close to each other. But if the polls are moving consistently either up or down, the trend estimate will be a better estimate of opinion as of today while the simple average will be an estimate of where the race was some 3 polls ago (for a 5 poll average-- longer ago as more polls are included in the average.) And that's why we estimate the trends the way we do.

What do the scoreboards represent?

For the presidential race, we add up the electoral votes represented by each category of our classification. So we have allocated all 538 electoral votes as either strongly supportive or leaning to a candidate.

For the race for Senate, we have classified the current standing of the 35 contests and added those numbers to the party affiliations of the 63 Senators not facing an election this year. As such, the large numbers in the middle of the scoreboard should add to 100. The two senators labeled as "other" (Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut) caucus with the Democrats.

We follow the same procedure for the races for Governor, plotting our classifications for the 11 contests for Governor and adding those numbers to the party affiliation of the remaining 39 governors not up for election this year.

What is the basis of the classification of each race?

Regardless of the number of polls, we calculate a "confidence intervals" around the trend estimate based on the average sample size for the available polls in each state. These intervals reflect the uncertainty in the estimate due to random noise in the polling data.

If a race shows a lead that is outside the 95% confidence interval, then we classify this as a "strong" lead. If the lead is between the 68% and 95% confidence intervals, then we classify it as a "lean". If the race is inside the 68% confidence interval, then we classify the race as "too close to call."

Mark Blumenthal is the editor and publisher of Pollster.com.
Charles Franklin is the co-developer of Pollster.com.
Margie Omero is President and founder of Momentum Analysis, LLC, a Democratic public opinion research firm based in Washington, DC.
David W. Moore is a senior fellow with the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.
Steve Lombardo is President and CEO of Lombardo Consulting Group.
Brian Schaffner is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Kristen Soltis is currently the Director of Policy Research for The Winston Group, a Washington DC."

Salon

Snarfster — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:21:39 +0000

The Big Picture

Snarfster — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:25:16 +0000

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ADD The Big Picture

VISIT The Big Picture

What's this site about?

From Website ... "A frequent commentator on CNBC, Barry L. Ritholtz is a weekly guest on Kudlow & Company. He has guest-hosted Squawk Box on numerous occasions, and also appears regularly on Bloomberg, Fox, and PBS¹. Mr. Ritholtz was profiled in the Wall Street Journal"s Quite Contrary column (August 3, 2004; Page C3). His market perspectives are quoted regularly in the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Forbes, Fortunes, and other print media².

He is deeply honored to be the dedicatee of the The 2007 Stock Trader's Almanac's 40th Anniversary edition.

Mr. Ritholtz is the author of the popular "Apprenticed Investor" columns at TheStreet.com, a series geared towards educating novice and intermediate investors. Mr. Ritholtz also publishes more formal analyses, often at The Wall Street Journal, Barron"s, or RealMoney.com3.

Mr. Ritholtz is CEO and Director of Equity Research at FuisonIQ, an online quantitative research firm. For the first time, the company is making their institutional grade research product available to individual traders and investors.

Recently, Mr. Ritholtz was Chief Market Strategist for Maxim Group a New York Investment bank, managing over $5 Billion in clients assets. Applying his model to the broader investing environment, Mr. Ritholtz wrote weekly Market Commentary for the firm's brokers and institutional clientele. His research and investment commentary is now available to the investing public at Ritholtz Research & Analytics.

Beyond the weekly commentary and published articles, Mr. Ritholtz also authors The Big Picture -- a top-ranked financial weblog. The Big Picture covers Investing & Trading to Macro Economics, and everything else in between. The blog has quickly amassed over 11 million visitors.

Media accolades have poured in for The Big Picture from the NYT ("Trenchant economic commentary") and the WSJ ("What the In-Crowd Knows). The Journal cited The Big Picture as the Economic "Blog Insiders Read to Stay Current;" Business Week noted its "insightful calls on the direction of the stock market" (Blogging For Dollars). CNBC's Larry Kudlow described it as "very helpful and addictive -- the best stock market blog there is." Numerous traffic sites rank The Big Picture as the most trafficked Markets/Economic's blog on the web.

Ritholtz' longstanding interest in media and technology led him to Burst.com, a publicly traded software firm focusing on faster-than-real-time audio and video streaming over the internet. He has served on the firm's Board of Directors for the past 4 years. His expertise in digital media has led top tier Newspapers and Magazines to consult with him on the development of their online strategies.

Hailed as a "bright and savvy fellow" by Alan Abelson's Up and Down Wall Street column (Barron's), he is one of handful of Strategists who participate in BusinessWeek's annual market forecast. He teaches a course on The Economy of America for New York University's School of Continuing & Professional Studies.

Mr. Ritholtz performed his graduate studies at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, where he focused on Economics, Anti-Trust and Corporate Law. He was a member of the Law Review, and graduated Cum Laude with a 3.56 GPA.

His undergraduate work was at Stony Brook University, where on a Regents Scholarship, he focused on Mathematics and Physics, graduating with an Associates degree in Political Science. He was a member of the Stony Brook Equestrian Team, and competed successfully in the National Championships (1981) of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. In addition to writing the National Affairs column for the campus weekly (The Stony Brook Press), he was elected Vice-President of the student body.

When not bemoaning the New York Knicks' all-too-frequent offensive lapses, Mr. Ritholtz is a vintage sports car enthusiast. He and his wife Wendy, an artist and teacher, and their hairy dog Max, live on the North Shore of Long Island, New York."

FactCheck.org

Snarfster — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:56:07 +0000

PolitiFact

Snarfster — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:25:12 +0000

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ADD PolitiFact

VISIT PolitiFact

What's this site about?

From Website ... "Each election year we hear this lament from our readers suffering the barrage of campaign rhetoric: "just gimme the truth."

That"s the mission of PolitiFact. The St. Petersburg Times of Florida and Congressional Quarterly of Washington, D.C. two of America"s most trusted, independent newsrooms have created the site to help voters separate fact from falsehood in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Journalists and researchers from the Times and CQ will fact-check the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications. We"ll publish new findings every day on PolitiFact.com, and list our sources for all to see.

PolitiFact (pronounced puh-lit"-eh-fact) is bolder than previous journalistic fact-checking efforts because we"ll make a call, declaring whether a claim is True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True or False. We even have a special category for the most ridiculous claims that we call "Pants on Fire."

The St. Petersburg Times is Florida"s largest newspaper and the winner of six Pulitzer Prizes. Washington-based Congressional Quarterly is the authoritative news source for coverage of Congress and politics. CQ and the Times are affiliates of the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, a center for journalism education in St. Petersburg.

PolitiFact will offer readers the choice of quick scorecards or longer stories explaining the issues and our rulings. It is a vibrant database that allows users to search for candidates" records of accuracy based on their names, issues, or the rulings on our Truth-O-Meter. The site will include video of campaign ads and candidates" speeches.

We'll also publish an "attack file" a home for fact-checking the attacks candidates make against each other. We recognize that in a world of political bloggers and "independent" political action committees, attacks don"t just come from the candidates themselves. So we will also check out many claims that enter the public discourse via a talk show host, a blogger or even a fictional character in a YouTube video.

We think PolitiFact breaks new ground in political journalism. As voters get bombarded with confusing claims and counter-claims, they can turn to PolitiFact to find out what"s right and what"s not.

How the Truth-O-Meter works
The heart of PolitiFact is the Truth-O-Meter, which we use to rate the candidates" claims and attacks.

The Truth-O-Meter is based on the concept that especially in politics - truth is not black and white. Depending on how much information a candidate provides, a statement can be half true or barely true without being false.

PolitiFact writers and editors spend considerable time deliberating on our rulings. We always try to get the original statement in its full context rather than an edited form that appeared in news stories. We then divide the statement into individual claims that we check separately. For example, a Bill Richardson TV ad produced two claims. (We only make Truth-O-Meter rulings on those individual claims. We don"t make them in our articles because they often summarize multiple Truth-O-Meter items that had different rulings.)

When possible, we go to original sources to verify the claims. We look for original government reports rather than news stories. We interview impartial experts.

We then decide which of our six rulings should apply:
TRUE The statement is accurate and there"s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE The statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
BARELY TRUE The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

How we choose the facts to check
Every day, the presidential candidates unleash a torrent of words: speeches, TV ads, press releases, Web pages, letters to contributors, interviews. Together it forms a huge river of rhetoric that can be overwhelming. Who can you believe?

Our goal at PolitiFact is to sort out the candidates" claims and determine how true they are. With so many claims made every day and a modest staff, we use our best news judgment in deciding which facts to check.

First, we only check things that can be verified. We can"t verify an opinion like "the Iraq war was a mistake" or "taxes are too high." But we can confirm factual statements such as "John McCain voted both ways on the Bush tax cuts" (True) or "Some of the candidates don"t believe in God" (False. They all believe).

We choose items that pique our curiosity or look questionable. We checked a claim by Sen. John McCain that it"s virtually impossible to fire a federal employee. That"s long been the conventional wisdom, but we wondered if it was true. (It is). We checked Sen. Barack Obama"s claims about fuel efficiency because they seemed far-fetched.

Every day, we scour the transcripts of the candidates' speeches, debates and interviews for verifiable claims that look questionable. We welcome suggestions about facts we should check. Send them to truthometer@politifact.com."

Talking Points Memo

Snarfster — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:14:58 +0000

The Jed Report

Snarfster — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:12:38 +0000

Funny or Die

Snarfster — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:53:34 +0000

Gizmo Cult

Snarfster — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:25:31 +0000

CQ Politics

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Snopes - Rumor Has It

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Micaman's Thoughts (português)

Snarfster — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:41:24 +0000

One Higher Power

Snarfster — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:27:47 +0000

4outof10

Snarfster — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:16:31 +0000

Techcrunch

Snarfster — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:59:07 +0000

Attytood

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Picturenose

Snarfster — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:25:36 +0000

Doktor Snake

Snarfster — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:42:16 +0000

Blue Amercia Feeds (10 feeds)

Snarfster — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:22:24 +0000

Red America Feeds (9 feeds)

Snarfster — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:21:31 +0000

Copyblogger

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Heckler Spray

Snarfster — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:38:16 +0000