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Tag: Nate Silver

  • Nate Silver, Master Prognosticator, Talks to Google’s Chief Economist

    Nate Silver became a household name this past election season, as his election predictions wound up being the subject of some partisan bickering. Whether you loved him or hated him in the final months of the campaign, he was vindicated on election day when he nearly perfectly called every race – 31 out of 33 state Senate races, as well as all 50 states in the Presidential race. Working out of his statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver has become one of the most (if not the most) accurate prognosticator in modern polling.

    He recently sat down with Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian to discuss his bestselling book “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t” (among other things).

    The interview, part of Google’s popular Authors at Google series, is available in its entirety below:

  • Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Twitter Account Hacked, Grammar Temporarily Improved

    Word’s spreading around the Twitterscape that U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa had his Twitter account hacked this afternoon. Politico is saying that the hacker is a supporter of Anonymous.

    Sen. Grassley, for those that might not know, is a co-sponsor for Protect IP Act. Unfortunately for us, the original hacked tweets have already been deleted – although his people did confirm that the tweets weren’t authorized – from his account so the best you’ll have to do is with this retweet (and yes, multiple other people have retweeted the same post from Grassley’s account – this is just the one I sampled):

    RT @ChuckGrassley: Dear Iowans, vote against ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA, because this man, Chuck Grassley, wants YOUR internet censored(image) 1 hour ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    Politico reports that the following additional posts were tweeted (but they’re gone now, as well):

  • Dear Iowans, vote against ACTA, SOPA, and PIPA, because this man, Chuck Grassley, wants YOUR internet censored and all of that BS. Yes I was hacked.
  • Yes, I am an Anonymous follower
  • Chuck is a supporter of SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, meaning he wants no privacy for private accounts.
  • I really wanted Herman Cain to get president this year.
  • #Winning
  • Well, its been fun getting Chuck’s account this week, so I better get off. I got nothing better to do since we got a snow day here in Osage.
  • Grassley, to me, will always be remembered for his amazing tweet from all the way back in 2009 that, unfortunately, I can’t find the original tweet for that either (I know, I’m useless). However, thanks to the Internets, I present the text of the tweet to you:

    Work on farm Fri. Burning piles of brush WindyFire got out of control. Thank God for good naber He help get undr control PantsBurnLegWound.

    In case you’re new to the phenomenon of Grassley Tweets, the grammar in the above 2009 tweet can’t be attributed to the fact that he was on fire – his Twitterspeak is always that bad. Here are a few recent gems:

    IowaGOP…Do u want stay 1st in nation caucus? So quit crying ovr spilt milk Our leaders do great:Look..$$$ & votr affiliation(image) 2 days ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® · powered by @socialditto

    Can’t bliev Obama stopd pipeline. He puts China intrest ahead of US bc Canada is going sell oil either US or China Does Prez want jobs?(image) 4 days ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® · powered by @socialditto

    Had a minute to stop for coffee and a roll in Osceola and wound up with the largest sweet roll I’ve ever seen at the Family Table enuf43pl.(image) 5 days ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® · powered by @socialditto

    Nate Silver, who is pretty good with elections over at his Fivethirtyeight blog, posted the most astute confirmation of Grassley’s hacked account:

    You can identify the hacked posts in @ChuckGrassley‘s twitter feed because the hacker sometimes uses complete sentences.(image) 1 hour ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto