As I’m sure you’ve heard, the McCain campaign, having run out of ideas, has chosen to denigrate Barack Obama as a big celebrity. I submit for your consideration the IMDB pages for John McCain and Barack Obama.
For more, see Andrew Sullivan on McCain’s celebrity.
Stephen O’Grady talks about the risks of using Twitter to publish personal information:
But for the majority of us, I always thought the costs of keeping everything under lock and key far outweighed the benefits. Now, however, I am being forced to reconsider that view. Because, as John Simonds reports (not to rag on John here, he’s just the messenger), one or more of the professional communities I interact and work with may use the tool to form an impression of me.
It’s not obvious to me that this impression would be anything less than professional. I’m generally not Twittering after a night on the town, every other word is not something that would be considered unprintable, and I’m not posting the intimate details of my day to day existence. But I need to consider it, still, because as I’ve discussed in the past, Twitter is a personal tool for me first, professional tool second. A distant second.
I think this is why we’re seeing more people with two Twitter accounts, a public persona and a private one that they share with friends. I haven’t gone that route, however, I will say that my Twitter feed is currently protected.
(This reminds me that I need to write that post I’ve been meaning to about the value I see in Twitter in general.)
The Wall Street Journal has issued a correction for its stupid “Is Obama too fit to be President” story that I linked to the other day.
Craig Newmark explains why it’s important for our next President to be Internet literate.
I was surprised to read this evening that American Airlines has asked Kayak and SideStep to stop displaying their fares. (This follows news that you’ll have to pay JetBlue seven dollars if you want a pillow and blanket to use during your flights.)
This latest move by AA strikes me as utterly baffling. If you haven’t used Kayak, it’s a site that enables you to search many sites at once for airfares, including all of the airline sites, Orbitz, and others. The ticket price comparison feature is nice, but Kayak really excels because its interface is outstanding. So why is AA dropping out?
My guess is that they’re hoping to encourage other airlines to drop out as well, in the end killing price comparison sites like Kayak. Kayak is, among other things, an incredibly valuable tool for people who want to pay as low a fare as possible for a flight. Not only will Kayak show you the cheapest flights on a given set of dates, they also help you figure out when is the best time to buy tickets in order to get a good price.
THe airline pricing model is built around selling tickets to each customer at the highest price possible. They sell tickets cheaply to vacationers who are very price sensitive and buy tickets far in advance. They sell tickets at higher prices to business customers who tend to fly on shorter notice and have less flexibility when it comes to flight times. Sites like Kayak subvert that model, and it seems apparent to me that AA’s real goal is to kill them before they become more popular.
My guess is that AA reverses its policy before Kayak (and its competitors) disappear.
Ever wonder how reporters research their stories? Here’s Amy Chozick of the Wall Street Journal looking for interview subjects for today’s “Is Obama too skinny?” story on Yahoo’s message boards. I didn’t think it was possible to suck this badly.
Stan Taylor on hunting and the modern suburbanite:
I have not hunted since I left home for college, but I go through phases when I would like to take my son Samuel hunting. It’s important to me that he learn where his food comes from. After reading Gordon’s post, though, I realize why I have never done so. It would lack the social significance that Gordon describes. For Samuel and me to hunt, we would have to go about it as other suburban sportsmen–get a deer lease, buy gear, etc. It would be an event or an outing, not part of our family routine, as it was when I was a kid.
This interests me mostly as someone who shares common experiences. I can remember hunting and shooting as a kid, but while hunting doesn’t offend me, I cannot picture myself doing it.
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Sports statistics analysts take over the world
Somehow, Nate Silver’s political Web site escaped my notice until today. Silver is using the same techniques he and other used in building improved baseball statistics to analyze the performance of pollsters in 2008 elections, and to aggregate multiple polls into an accurate prediction of voter behavior.
The site provides a lot of interesting numbers, including the odds of various scenarios occurring, like “Obama wins all Kerry states” and “McCain loses OH/MI, wins election.” The site also provides return on investment rankings for the states, and the individual chance of the candidates winning each state.
The reason this post has the subject it does, though, is that it’s fun to watch sports analysis go mainstream. Sports analysis is a perfect training ground for statistical analysis because of the discrete raw statistics that can be used, and the fact that predictions can very easily be compared to actual results.
Most sports analysis comes down to a simple question, “Which things help teams win?” So if I’m a football analyst, I may argue that average time of possession better predicts winning than average margin of victory. I can then process the historical data for as many seasons of football as I like and test that argument. It doesn’t matter how beautiful my theory is, the data will quickly show whether I’m right or wrong.
It’s not surprising to me to see people who have cut their teeth in the world of sports analysis start applying their methods to other areas. The numbers may be different, but the discipline is the same. Silver is doing with polling numbers and election results what he did before with batting averages and baseball games.
If nothing else, it makes me feel like all of the time I’ve spent reading about quantitative analysis of sports hasn’t been a total waste.
If you’re into this sort of analysis, there’s also the Princeton Election Consortium, which posted a mild critique of Silver’s methodology. And for a more naive analysis that just looks at the latest poll result for each state, see electoral-vote.com.