Nate Silver's Hissy Fit

Pythia was prettier and more famous.

A follow up to my previous post. I'm been quite amused by Nate Silver's obsession with Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium over their competing predictions of the Senate election outcome. It's as if Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, got her panties in a twist because the Cumaean Sibyl had disagreed with her prediction of a wet fall on the Attic peninsula.

It doesn't matter. One will end up closer to the mark than the other but neither will be flawless. Both will claim their technique was perfect; it was their data that was imprecise. The one who gets closer to the actual election result will claim it proof of his infallibility. And it's all a bunch of pseudo-scientific hooey.

The Sibyl of Cumae is on the Sistine Chapel.