In March 2008, a statistician using the pseudonym Poblano started
a blog where he made predictions about the outcome of the 2008 US primary
elections. This blog — named “FiveThirtyEight” in reference to the
size of the US electoral college — quickly rose to prominence, and
the author (who soon revealed himself to be Nate Silver) was widely lauded
for his successful predictions of electoral outcomes.
He also attracted a large number of imitators — especially in Canada,
where (since FiveThirtyEight concerned itself almost exclusively with US
politics) they didn’t face any competition from FiveThirtyEight. In some
cases, these competitors went so far as to imitate the name; one of
the first Canadian poll aggregation websites operated under the name “308”
(a reference to the number of seats in the Canadian House of Commons), and
a later website used the name “338” — after the House of Commons
expanded by 30 seats.
Unfortunately, when political nerds try to imitate what a statistical nerd
has done without having any understanding of statistics, the outcome is
quite predictable: They suck.
