Week 44

"I am a political statistician, or, perhaps I should say, a statistical political scientist [..] And for months I’ve always said, either side could win it.

Obsession with this question is not confined to the United States. Last week I was interviewed by a reporter from France, who asked me who I thought would win the election. I said, it’s too close to call. He said, but Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog on NYTimes.com currently gives Obama a 72.9 percent chance. I think Nate is great, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to his blog for a while. But I’d still say the election is too close to call [..]

Let’s dig and see what this means. If we ran the election 100 times, Silver was saying that Obama would win 72 of them — but we’ll only be running it once. Silver was predicting an approximate 50.3 percent of the two-party vote share for Obama, but shifts of as large as 1 percent of the vote could happen at any time"

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/what-too-close-to-call-really-means/

"The professor [..] picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and fill[ed] it with golf balls. [T]hen he picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. [N]ext picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else...

[He said] 'Now [..] I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things---your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else---the small stuff.

'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness"