[sl8r]

""" As a financial analyst at an investment bank, or a research analyst at an economic consulting firm, your job would be in serious jeopardy if you produced 538’s model output without a clear explanation of how those fat tails that represent an inordinate number of close to impossible scenarios could actually occur. A model like that just isn’t client-ready. Time to re-think those assumptions! """

This line of reasoning irks me -- If the outputs don't agree with with my preconceived conclusions, the model must be wrong. (Rather than: Maybe my preconceived conclusions are wrong.)

I don't have an opinion on the 538 model, not having analyzed the internals. But I don't like the idea of criticizing a model because you don't agree with its results.

On the bright side, the election will shortly be over and we'll have at least some measure of how accurate each model (538, HuffPo, etc.) actually was.

[rz2k]

Ther are cynical observations to be made about kurtosis and professional incentive structures for analysts and economists employed by investment firms.

However if his model performs with the precision of last time then the confidence intervals might be criticized as too wide.