Poblano unmasked!

[featherman]

The mysterious Poblano of fivethirtyeight.com electoral analysis site revealed today that he is in fact sportswriter and baseball analyst Nate Silver of the Baseball Prospectus:

"There are certain pleasures in writing anonymously. Particularly in the political world, where there is a whole mythology associated with anonymity -- think Deep Throat or Primary Colors or Atrios. But I'm fortunate enough to have been granted the opportunity to develop some relationships with larger outlets (you should see these coming to fruition very soon). And it just ain't very professional to keep referring to yourself as a chili pepper.

My real name is Nate Silver and my principal occupation has been as a writer, analyst and partner at a sports media company called Baseball Prospectus. What we do over there and what I'm doing over here are really quite similar. Both baseball and politics are data-driven industries."

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Also here is the baseball site:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/

[dkf]

1. These sports guys are really stepping up.

Its funny that the people we associate with entertainment topics are better than the pros.

[alfredo]

2. Sports fans are info junkies. Stats are the holy scripture.

[dkf]

3. This is a nice catch... 50% different from halving the delegation.

"OK, I think I've finally figured out what Chuck Todd and the First Read guys are talking about:

As for the actual meeting itself, there's one more angle you ought to be aware of: a 50% cut and a halving of the delegates is not the same thing. For instance, if Florida delegates are seated in their entirety, but only have their vote counted as a .5, then Clinton will net approximately 19 delegates out of the state. But if the delegation is cut in half, that's done in every congressional district as well as statewide, then suddenly Clinton's advantage is only a net of six. That's right, the complicated nature of the DNC delegate selection process will be a good reminder to math majors everywhere that a 50% cut is not the same as a halving of an individual number. Go figure...

The distinction is in the way that the delegates are divided up in individual congressional districts. Take for example a district that Clinton won 70-30, and that originally had 4 delegates. If you do the multiplication, you get 2.8 fractional delegates for Clinton and 1.2 for Obama, which rounds up to a 3-1 delegate take for Clinton.

But now suppose that this district only has 2 delegates because Florida's delegation has been cut in half. With her 70 percent of the vote, Clinton wins 1.4 fractional delegates, and Obama 0.6. However, Clinton's number now rounds down to 1 delegate, whereas Obama's rounds up to 1 delegate."

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/05/six-versus-half-dozen.html