[ThrowMeDown01]

> The whole point of probabilistic modeling

The whole point about the current topic as well as of my post: You missed by about a thousand miles. Please read it again. It's really pointless to argue about a strawman created by you. Your model is useless, that's the point! It makes no real(!) predictions - not usable for anything apart from blowing ever more hot air, and if it doesn't come to pass, you are never wrong because you left the door open by not actually saying anything in the first place.

Do you not understand that the guy/his company did nothing at all? And that giving some arbitrary probability was/is utterly devoid of any meaning (especially if you can't be wrong whatever the actual outcome)? They could have made any prediction at all, what difference would it have made? That is the value of that "work".

However, I realize there's people who like such meaningless drivel. It is a version of appearing to actually do something while not actually doing anything. You make it into the news but you can never be held accountable because whatever happens happens, you just helped create a few more entirely useless headlines (apart from helping with page views and ad impressions of course). It's actually quite ingenious to misuse actually useful tools like statistics.

[scott_s]

Nate Silver analyzes their recent predictions against actual outcomes here: How FiveThirtyEight’s 2018 Midterm Forecasts Did, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-fivethirtyeights-20...

[ThrowMeDown01]

So, and now go back and read what I wrote until you understand it. There is no point to this whole thing (apart from creating clicks for the attention industry). It has no impact (again apart from creating clicks). There is no outcome that hinges on anything. They can claim whatever, whether they are right or wrong matters for absolutely nothing. The creation of attention and clicks is completely independent - it happens before the "forecast" event. Great business where outcomes don't matter.