Nate Silver on the Supreme Court and the Underrated Stat for Finding Good Food (Ep. 7 - Live at Mason)

If you had to say of all the areas of human life, where can data bring the biggest improvements, what would your answer be?

如果你不得不说，在人类生活的各个领域，数据能在哪些领域带来最大的改善，你的答案是什么？

Doctors are not known for being terribly analytics driven.

医生并不以非常受分析驱动而闻名。

I don’t know the culture enough as to know why.

我对文化不够了解，不知道为什么。

In terms of areas that I would like us to focus on at FiveThirtyEight a little bit more than we do now, criminality and criminal justice is an interesting area, in part because you have lots of issues with data.

就我希望 FiveThirtyEight 比现在更多关注的领域而言，犯罪和刑事司法是一个有趣的领域，部分原因是数据存在很多问题。

If you want to know how many police officers are killed, how many people are killed by police officers, you don’t really know that very well.

如果你想知道有多少警察被杀，有多少人被警察杀害，你真的不太清楚。

Education is an area where I suspect you have a lot of data used poorly as well as data used well.

我怀疑在教育领域，有很多数据使用不当，也有很多数据使用得很好。

Urban planning is something we’re fascinated by.

城市规划是我们着迷的事情。

We did a big analysis of Uber data that New York City spent like $2 million to conclude, but we concluded on our own in a week or two of work, which is that Uber, by and large in New York, was not adding cars to the streets, at least not in Manhattan.

我们对纽约市花了大约 200 万美元得出的 Uber 数据进行了大规模分析，但我们自己花了一两周的时间得出结论，那就是 Uber 在纽约基本上没有在街道上增加汽车，至少在曼哈顿没有。

Whereas, the legal sector, I think, relies more on precision.

而我认为，法律部门更依赖于精确性。

You want a very precise and possibly wrong answer, which is what you’re trying to avoid sometimes when you’re doing statistical analysis.

您想要一个非常精确且可能错误的答案，这正是您在进行统计分析时有时想要避免的情况。

It goes as follows: “Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang up them.”

它是这样说的：“那么说谎者和说脏话的人都是傻瓜，因为说谎者和说脏话的人足以殴打诚实的人并将他们绞死。”

Do you think it’s a kind of entertainment where sports, betting, politics, that kind of horse race, it’s fine, but real data, do people want to see data on how good or how honest they actually are, or is it more like the Macbeth quotation?

你认为这是一种娱乐，体育、博彩、政治、赛马之类的都很好，但是真实的数据，人们想要看到他们到底有多优秀或有多诚实的数据，还是更像麦克白的引语？

The notion of empowering people to make better decisions with their own health is a noble notion.

让人们能够根据自己的健康做出更好的决定是一个崇高的理念。

I guess I’m enough of a free marketer that I say you should give people the information whether they use it well or not.

我想我是一个足够的自由营销者，我说你应该向人们提供信息，无论他们使用得好与否。

It’s their right to have it.

这是他们拥有它的权利。

I’m not sure I have a firm conclusion about whether it leads to better decisions or not.

我不确定我是否能得出明确的结论来判断它是否会带来更好的决策。

Again, my impression is that among doctors and hospital administrators, they’re not terribly data driven either, despite their obviously rigorous work in other respects.

同样，我的印象是，在医生和医院管理人员中，他们也不是非常受数据驱动，尽管他们在其他方面的工作显然很严格。

On superforecasting

关于超级预测

I know the various sports algorithms that we have at FiveThirtyEight have tended to beat Vegas — not by a lot, but we’ll win 52 percent of the time and so forth on average.

我知道我们在 FiveThirtyEight 拥有的各种体育算法往往会击败维加斯 ——不是很多，但我们平均会赢得 52% 的胜率等等。

A lot of time I’ll have people say, “Well, I know, say, Donald Trump’s gonna win, because he’s up to 52 percent.” He’s at lower than that now, but at one point, he was up to 55 percent to win the GOP nomination at Betfair.

很多时候我会让人们说，“嗯，我知道唐纳德·特朗普会赢，因为他的支持率高达 52%。”他的支持率比现在要低，但有一次，他在必发 (Betfair) 赢得共和党提名的支持率高达 55%。

That doesn’t really add any value to the conversation.

这并没有真正给谈话增加任何价值。

I’m more interested, as a person and as a researcher and journalist, in providing information that then other people can aggregate, as opposed to the other way around.

作为一个人、一个研究人员和记者，我更感兴趣的是提供其他人可以汇总的信息，而不是相反。

If you talk about, “How good are political markets?,” the first question is, “How good are markets?”

如果你谈论“政治市场有多好？”，第一个问题是“市场有多好？”

The answer to that is “pretty good,” but when the distribution of error is not very linear, when they’re off, they can be off by a lot.

答案是“非常好”，但是当误差分布不是很线性时，当它们偏离时，它们可能会偏离很多。

Are you the person who knows when they’re off?

你是知道他们什么时候下班的人吗？

That’s harder to do, potentially.

这可能更难做到。

On the (distant) future

关于（遥远的）未来

Some of it is thinking about, frankly, this Donald Trump phenomenon.

坦率地说，其中一些人正在考虑唐纳德·特朗普的现象。

Caren Louise Photographs

卡伦·路易丝照片

In many other contexts, there are all types of places around the world where nationalism is a much bigger phenomenon than it is in the United States.

在许多其他情况下，世界上许多地方的民族主义现象都比美国大得多。

Race and racism is embedded in a great deal of political turmoil in the United States.

种族和种族主义深深植根于美国的大量政治动荡之中。

In some ways, I kind of wondered after the Great Recession, “How come we haven’t seen more social upheaval?” Maybe we’re seeing that a little bit delayed.

在某些方面，大衰退之后我有点想知道，“为什么我们没有看到更多的社会动荡？”也许我们看到的有点延迟了。

It’s more of a revolution of rising expectations.

这更像是一场期望不断上升的革命。

At the same time, there is such a tendency now to focus on — in politics, people focus on a very small number of stories that are not representative of the big picture.

同时，现在有这样一种倾向——在政治上，人们关注极少数不代表大局的故事。

There is a lot of wonderful news in the world in terms of poverty rates going down globally, income inequality going down, diseases being eradicated, but I wondered, to some extent, how much the media culture tends to focus a lens on negative aspects of society, lower people’s happiness level, and all this type of stuff.

世界上有很多关于全球贫困率下降、收入不平等缩小、疾病被根除等好消息，但我想知道，在某种程度上，媒体文化倾向于将镜头聚焦在社会的负面方面、人们的幸福水平降低以及所有这些类型的事情上。

Before, if you couldn’t measure anything at all, then maybe your heuristics aren’t that bad.

以前，如果你根本无法衡量任何东西，那么也许你的启发法并没有那么糟糕。

But if you can say, “What’s going to make me really happy tomorrow?

但如果你能说：“明天什么能让我真正快乐？

In my business, what’s going to get my website the most traffic 36 hours from now?,” isn’t necessarily the best decision in the long run.

在我的业务中，什么能让我的网站在 36 小时后获得最多的流量？”从长远来看，这不一定是最好的决定。

You can measure the short run and not the long run, and measure some things, not others.

你可以衡量短期而不是长期，也可以衡量一些事情，而不是其他事情。

That can make you quite myopic and is a bigger problem than people realize, perhaps.

这可能会让你目光短浅，而且问题可能比人们意识到的还要严重。

On Trump — and other political predictions

关于特朗普 — 和其他政治预测

If you go back and look at what we wrote, we said, “That could happen, but there are also a lot of candidates — Pat Buchanan, and so forth, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum — who will get 20, 25, 30-something percent of the electorate, and we have a high-floor, low-ceiling type of candidate.” That could still wind up being true.

如果你回头看看我们写的内容，我们会说，“这种情况可能会发生，但还有很多候选人————帕特·布坎南，等等，罗恩·保罗、里克·桑托勒姆————他们将获得 20%、25%、30% 左右的选民，而我们有一个高底低顶类型的候选人。”这仍然可能是真的。

With that said, for one thing, we’re dealing with a fairly small sample of relevant elections.

话虽如此，一方面，我们正在处理相当小的相关选举样本。

People look at, in the primaries, going back to 1972.

人们的目光回溯到 1972 年的初选。

One very basic lesson is that when you have a sample size, let’s say it’s roughly 15, there’s nothing you can do to make it not a sample size of 15.

一个非常基本的教训是，当您的样本量大约为 15 时，您无法采取任何措施使其样本量不是 15。

No matter how compelling you can make your rationalization to say, “Well but, you know, we have theory as well as empirics here,” still, 15 cases is 15 cases.

无论你的合理化有多么令人信服，“好吧，但是，你知道，我们这里有理论和经验”，但 15 个案例就是 15 个案例。

I think maybe making people more cautious about saying “Unlikely” versus “Never.” Now, the record will show we said “Unlikely” and not “Never,” but still it’s a lot of things to think about.

我认为这可能会让人们在说“不太可能”而不是“从不”时更加谨慎。现在，记录将显示我们说的是“不太可能”而不是“从不”，但仍然有很多事情需要考虑。

You talked about what superforecasters are supposed to do —

你谈到了超级预测者应该做什么——

Lots of unusual candidates have done well in early polls.

许多不寻常的候选人在早期民意调查中表现出色。

Lots of unusual candidates have won Iowa or New Hampshire, not usually both, but one or the other.

许多不寻常的候选人赢得了爱荷华州或新罕布什尔州的胜利，通常不是两者都获胜，而是其中一个获胜。

It’s the ability to consolidate the field after that, by becoming the consensus choice of the party that’s been more unusual.

在此之后，通过成为政党的共识选择来巩固这一领域的能力才是更不寻常的。

That assumption still might prove to be true.

这个假设仍然可能被证明是正确的。

I did think though that I, and a lot of people, overrated the ability of the Republican Party to stop what I think is, in some ways, a radical insurgency within the GOP.

但我确实认为，我和很多人都高估了共和党阻止我认为在某种程度上共和党内部激进叛乱的能力。

I thought the people who were pro-Trump were generally not people whose opinions I would weight as highly.

我认为支持特朗普的人通常不会受到我的重视。

And I think that’s lazy and possibly quite dangerous.

我认为这很懒惰，而且可能相当危险。

But the most basic problem is that in an election between Sanders and Trump or Clinton and Trump, everything is quite left of center.

但最基本的问题是，在桑德斯和特朗普或克林顿和特朗普之间的选举中，一切都非常偏左。

Trump, when he was thinking about running as an independent in 1999–2000, had an eccentric platform.

当特朗普在 1999 年至 2000 年考虑以独立候选人身份参选时，他有一个古怪的政纲。

It involved single-payer health care, a wealth tax.

它涉及单一付款人的医疗保健和财富税。

He was anti-immigration, even then, but pro-choice.

即使在那时，他也反对移民，但支持堕胎。

He said explicitly, “I’m not bound by any party, really.

他明确表示：“我不受任何一方的约束，真的。

I’ll probably reconsider my stances if I become the Republican nominee.” To me, the more viable candidate in that case would be a Mitt Romney–Condi Rice ticket or something like that.

如果我成为共和党候选人，我可能会重新考虑我的立场。”对我来说，在这种情况下更可行的候选人将是米特·罗姆尼-康迪·赖斯的选票或类似的东西。

No one had ever done this before.

以前没有人这样做过。

You’re advising at that time.

到时候你就提建议了。

How do you start thinking about that problem?

你是如何开始思考这个问题的？

You know what I’m talking about, right?

你知道我在说什么，对吧？

You’re from Michigan, of course you do.

你来自密歇根州，当然。

If you want to get really complicated, you say the Tigers had Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich.

如果你想变得更复杂，你可以说老虎队有丹尼·麦克莱恩、米基·洛里奇。

They had a strikeout-heavy pitching staff.

他们有一支三振率很高的投手队伍。

Maybe worry about defense a little bit less.

也许少一点担心防守。

Tiger Stadium is a park conducive to low batting averages to begin with, a little high home run totals.

老虎体育场是一个适合低击球率、高本垒打总数的公园。

It’s not obvious to me that it was the best move, but it is interesting that, all of a sudden, baseball teams and football teams become, in general, more strategically correct when they have more on the line.

对我来说，这并不是最好的举动，但有趣的是，突然之间，棒球队和橄榄球队在面临更多风险时，总体上变得更加正确。

In the World Series, closer usage is a lot better, when you bring your best guy in in the eighth inning or the seventh inning.

在世界大赛中，当你在第八局或第七局让你最好的球员上场时，近距离使用会更好。

You see in the NFL teams will go for two more often in the playoffs, go for it on fourth down more often in the playoffs.

你看，NFL球队在季后赛中会更频繁地争取两分，在季后赛中更频繁地在第四次进攻中进行争取。

Which is a hint that when the stakes are low, culture tends to prevail.

这表明，当风险较低时，文化往往会占上风。

When the stakes are high and the outcome of the game is all that matters, then things are different.

当赌注很高并且游戏的结果至关重要时，情况就会有所不同。

He speaks the language of conservatives without being too extreme, but the big question in the election right now is, “Where is Trump’s ceiling?” If you start out at 25 percent, like he did in Iowa, that’s one thing.

他说的是保守派的语言，但并没有太极端，但现在选举的最大问题是“特朗普的上限在哪里？”如果你从 25% 开始，就像他在爱荷华州所做的那样，那是一回事。

Thirty-five percent is much closer to the point where he’d be hard to stop, but even now, you see in New Hampshire, even though he won with 35 percent of the vote, half of the Republicans there said they would not want him as their nominee, so the question is, “Can the non-Trump candidates organize themselves into one candidate?” And then does he stop at 35 percent, or 40, or 45, or 51?

35% 已经接近他难以阻止的地步了，但即使是现在，你看在新罕布什尔州，尽管他以 35% 的选票获胜，那里一半的共和党人表示他们不希望他成为他们的提名人，所以问题是，“非特朗普候选人能否将自己组织成一名候选人？”然后他会停在 35%、40%、45%、51% 吗？

If he stops at 51, then it kind of doesn’t matter.

如果他止步于 51 岁，那就没什么关系了。

I suppose I think Rubio at — what is he at?

我想我认为卢比奥在“——”他在做什么？

Three to one?

三对一？

You hear this.

你听到这个。

There’s data on this, and what’s your opinion of that data?

有这方面的数据，您对此数据有何看法？

You can see that there’s a price for extremism.

你可以看到，极端主义是有代价的。

Not a price that can’t be overcome, if we go into a big recession or if Clinton or Bernie has huge problems, but Cruz would probably cost you three or four points relative to the median generic Republican.

如果我们陷入严重的衰退，或者克林顿或伯尼遇到了巨大的问题，这并不是一个无法克服的代价，但相对于一般共和党人的中位数，克鲁兹可能会让你付出三到四个百分点的代价。

Sanders, we haven’t really seen.

桑德斯，我们还没有真正见过。

Can he win states that are not very white and very liberal?

他能赢得白人和自由主义程度不高的州吗？

Maybe he can.

也许他可以。

Nevada seems to be pretty close.

内华达州似乎很接近。

I’m just saying, we haven’t really received that much information that would make you update your priors about Sanders all that much.

我只是说，我们还没有真正收到那么多信息来让你更新你对桑德斯的了解。

He also probably has to win by, with a little bit of room to spare.

他也可能必须获胜，还有一点剩余空间。

If it’s a tie, then Clinton will probably win on the basis of superdelegates.

如果是平局，那么克林顿可能会在超级代表的基础上获胜。

If she loses by a couple of points, but it’s close enough — so if you’re an underdog in a football game, and you lose unless you win by more than a field goal, it actually reduces your win probability quite a bit.

如果她输了几分，但已经足够接近了——所以如果你在一场足球比赛中处于劣势，并且除非你以超过射门得分的优势获胜，否则你会输掉比赛，这实际上会大大降低你获胜的概率。

If you’re the favorite already, then maybe it wouldn’t, but that’s tricky.

如果你已经是最爱，那么也许不会，但这很棘手。

When underdogs win, they tend to win narrowly, and if Clinton wins some of the races she should have won or should have lost — because superdelegates turn a narrow Bernie win by a field goal into, “Oh, after further review, we’re going to have an overtime quarter.

当弱者获胜时，他们往往会以微弱优势获胜，如果克林顿赢得了一些她本应获胜或本应输掉的比赛——因为超级代表会将伯尼以射门险胜的险胜变成“哦，经过进一步审查，我们将有一个加时赛季度。

The superdelegates will weigh in instead,” then I don’t know.

超级代表将会参与进来，”那我就不知道了。

I think 10 or 15 percent, somewhere in that range is probably about right.

我认为 10% 或 15%，在这个范围内的某个地方可能是正确的。

On sports stats — surprising and otherwise

关于体育统计数据 — 令人惊讶或其他

Start with Wilson’s — was it 36 triples in 1912?

从威尔逊的 开始——1912年是36个三元组吗？

That, and up through the modern age.

一直到现代。

What’s the most statistically impressive baseball record, and why?

统计上最令人印象深刻的棒球记录是什么？为什么？

Now there’s more evidence arguing against that, and in fact, it’s a classic mistake, but if you have a test that has low power, then you may mistake an ambiguous result for a negative result instead.

现在有更多的证据反对这一点，事实上，这是一个典型的错误，但如果你的测试功效较低，那么你可能会将模糊的结果误认为是阴性结果。

It appears now that there is some streakiness, as you would expect.

正如您所期望的，现在看来存在一些条纹。

You would expect that there is some variation in human behavior from day to day.

您可能会期望人类的行为每天都会发生一些变化。

It’s kind of amazing that being professional athletes, there’s less streakiness than you might think, but still — and now we’re getting, actually, data, too, that’s less noisy.

令人惊奇的是，作为职业运动员，条纹现象比你想象的要少，但仍然  -  现在我们实际上也得到了数据，噪音更少。

We now get data, for example, for Major League hitters — how hard the ball comes off their bat.

例如，我们现在获得美国职业棒球大联盟击球手的数据——球从球棒上击出的力度。

We have some unpublished research that a colleague of mine is doing, but it looks like you can maybe predict batting average up or down, or on-base average 20 or 30 points from a baseline, which in baseball terms is pretty relevant.

我们有一些我的同事正在做的未发表的研究，但看起来你可以预测击球率的上升或下降，或者上垒平均数与底线相比的 20 或 30 分，这在棒球术语中是非常相关的。

If you have a guy hitting a leadoff spot because he’s a 0.370 OBP hitter, and he’s really a 0.340 based on his current condition, then he should maybe be demoted down to the eighth spot in the lineup instead.

如果你有一个人因为 OBP 为 0.370 的击球手而进入领先位置，而根据他目前的状况，他实际上是 0.340，那么他可能应该被降级到阵容中的第八位。

This is true of a lot of things where the first cut from data is overly simplified.

对于很多事情来说都是如此，第一次从数据中截取的数据过于简单化。

You refine over time to something which is a little bit more nuanced.

随着时间的推移，你会变得更加细致。

As you know, the Houston Rockets are run by Daryl Morey, a numbers-intensive guy.

如您所知，休斯顿火箭队由达里尔·莫雷领导，他是一个数据密集型球员。

He’s from MIT, seems to be super smart, and right now, the big debate in Houston is which of their two star players they should trade, or maybe both.

他来自麻省理工学院，似乎超级聪明，现在，休斯顿的大争论是他们应该交易他们的两位明星球员中的哪一位，或者也许两者都交易。

They may not even make the playoffs, so how good is the best regression showing data analytics even work in sports?

他们甚至可能无法进入季后赛，那么显示数据分析在体育运动中发挥作用的最佳回归有多好呢？

They kind of had carte blanche, but they encountered baseball culture in a very head-on way, and yeah, the team did pretty well.

他们有点全权委托，但他们以非常正面的方式遇到了棒球文化，是的，球队做得很好。

It was a very obscure minor league, but if the baseline is making half of your decisions right, and you make 55 percent of your decisions right, or 53 percent right, because you’re using analytics, that’s a pretty big gain at the margin.

这是一个非常不起眼的小联盟，但如果基线是让你一半的决策正确，而你的决策有 55% 正确，或者 53% 正确，因为你使用了分析，那么这就是一个相当大的边际收益。

Yet, in a sport as noisy as baseball, it’s going to take a lot of time to show up.

然而，在棒球这样喧闹的运动中，它需要很长时间才能显现出来。

Basketball is less noisy, I will grant you, but in general, I think the Spurs are fairly analytics friendly, and the Rockets and the Warriors.

我承认，篮球的噪音较小，但总的来说，我认为马刺队、火箭队和勇士队对分析相当友好。

Basketball is probably the best example.

篮球可能是最好的例子。

Caren Louise Photographs

卡伦·路易丝照片

Defense, my goodness, more confusing to this American than cricket, yet market salaries of soccer players are determined.

防守，我的天哪，对这个美国人来说比板球更令人困惑，但足球运动员的市场工资是确定的。

There’s some papers on market salaries.

有一些关于市场工资的论文。

The small amount of data we have seem to predict those salaries very well.

我们掌握的少量数据似乎可以很好地预测这些薪资。

The fact that soccer behaves in normal ways, does this mean A, we can still get it all done with limited data, or does it mean B, having more data doesn’t really help us that much, and all of sports is a bit like soccer, and we’re ultimately just throwing up our hands and saying, “My goodness, it might as well be cricket”?

足球以正常方式进行的事实，这是否意味着 A，我们仍然可以用有限的数据来完成这一切，还是意味着 B，拥有更多的数据并不能真正帮助我们那么多，所有的运动都有点像足球，而我们最终只是举起双手说，“天哪，这还不如板球呢”？

I do think, though, in soccer, that we’re at the very early stages, and partly there hasn’t really been very much data collected at all.

不过，我确实认为，在足球领域，我们还处于非常早期的阶段，而且部分数据还没有真正收集到。

It’s not like in the NBA, where you had blocks and steals, very crude defensive stats.

这不像在NBA，你有盖帽和抢断，防守数据非常粗糙。

Literally, and we built the system for ESPN a few years ago, where the only data that’s been kept in the long term in soccer is goals and bookings, red cards and yellow cards.

从字面上看，我们几年前为 ESPN 构建了这个系统，其中唯一长期保存的足球数据是进球数、黄牌数、红牌和黄牌。

It’s not like we have assists, until recently.

直到最近我们才得到助攻。

It’s not like we have tackles.

这不像我们有铲球。

You can maybe get time on the pitch if you parse play-by-play records.

如果你分析逐场比赛的记录，你也许可以获得在球场上的时间。

We don’t have crossing passes.

我们没有过境通行证。

I think there’s still a lot of room for upward improvement in soccer.

我认为足球还有很大的上升空间。

I do think, though, in soccer, that we’re at the very early stages, and partly there hasn’t really been very much data collected at all…

不过，我确实认为，在足球领域，我们正处于非常早期的阶段，而且在某种程度上，根本没有收集到太多数据……

e built the system for ESPN a few years ago, where the only data that’s been kept in the long term in soccer is goals and bookings, red cards and yellow cards…I think there’s still a lot of room for upward improvement in soccer.

几年前，我们为 ESPN 建立了这个系统，其中唯一长期保存的足球数据是进球数、黄牌数、红牌和黄牌……我认为足球仍有很大的上升空间。

People put labor into a lot of endeavors, but why so few knuckleballers?

人们付出了很多努力，但为什么很少有指关节球者呢？

Why isn’t that a more regularized statistical process?

为什么这不是一个更加规范的统计过程呢？

Why so lumpy?

为什么这么肿？

But I think there is a second thing, which is that sports tends to engender conformism.

但我认为还有第二件事，那就是体育运动往往会导致因循守旧。

A lot of walks of life do, and that’s the whole tension, again, that comes up, is on the one hand, knowing that the market is usually pretty good, but on the other hand, that there are powerful biases to conform.

很多行业都这样做，这就是整个紧张局势，再次出现，一方面，知道市场通常相当不错，但另一方面，存在强大的偏见。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

New York City, the Upper East Side.

纽约市，上东区。

Overrated or underrated?

被高估还是被低估？

We did an analysis for New York Magazine a few years ago where we tried to say what’s the best neighborhood.

几年前，我们为《纽约杂志》做了一项分析，试图找出最好的社区。

The problem is that cost accounts for an R-squared of like 0.93 with our quality index or something.

问题是，对于我们的质量指数或其他指标，成本的 R 平方约为 0.93。

It’s really hard to improve your lot in New York, at least at the neighborhood level.

改善你在纽约的生活确实很难，至少在社区层面是这样。

New York is actually extremely efficiently priced.

纽约的物价实际上非常高效。

We did an analysis for New York Magazine a few years ago where we tried to say what’s the best neighborhood.

几年前，我们为《纽约杂志》做了一项分析，试图找出最好的社区。

The problem is that cost accounts for an R-squared of like 0.93 with our quality index or something.

问题是，对于我们的质量指数或其他指标，成本的 R 平方约为 0.93。

It’s really hard to improve your lot in New York, at least at the neighborhood level.

改善你在纽约的生活确实很难，至少在社区层面是这样。

But I don’t know, it’s hard to find good hole-in-the-wall places to eat in the — although there’s some ramen shops that are getting better.

但我不知道，在中国很难找到好的简陋餐厅——尽管有些拉面店做得越来越好了。

I, like, basically, judge everything by food.

我基本上喜欢通过食物来判断一切。

The idea of legalizing drugs.

毒品合法化的想法。

Overrated or underrated?

被高估还是被低估？

I mean, I don’t know.

我的意思是，我不知道。

I’m enough of a lowercase L libertarian where I think that the government ought to have a stronger reason to intervene in choices that people are making instead of a lesser reason, necessarily.

我是一个小写的 L 自由主义者，我认为政府应该有更强有力的理由来干预人们所做的选择，而不是一个更次要的理由。

To me, it clearly makes no sense to treat marijuana as being a more serious substance than alcohol, for example.

对我来说，将大麻视为比酒精更严重的物质显然是没有意义的。

I don’t think, in my heart of hearts, if I were running for office or in the Senate or something, that I would vote for a bill to legalize heroin or cocaine, but decriminalizing it, perhaps.

在我内心深处，如果我竞选公职或参议院或其他什么职位，我不会投票支持一项使海洛因或可卡因合法化的法案，但也许将其非刑罪化。

But I don’t know.

但我不知道。

I think the consequentialist case, for a long time, probably underrated and may have gone a little bit too far in the other direction.

我认为结果论的案例在很长一段时间内可能被低估，并且可能在另一个方向上走得太远了。

But again, I would say if it’s close, then you give people the choice.

但我再说一遍，如果情况很接近，那么你就给人们选择的机会。

It’s a fascinating — we were talking before about how Singapore is a city that, we hypothesized that if you have a few constraints that might seem slightly strange, then maybe having a few strange constraints is helpful.

这是一个令人着迷的事情——我们之前讨论过新加坡是一个怎样的城市，我们假设如果你有一些看起来有点奇怪的限制，那么也许有一些奇怪的限制是有帮助的。

When you talk about the strange — my sister lived in Germany for a while.

当你谈论奇怪的事情时——我姐姐在德国住了一段时间。

She’s like, “Well, yeah, if you’re there in the shop and they’re going to close at four, it doesn’t matter if you have a huge line of groceries, the store will close down and you have to put your stuff back, and ‘Sorry, you can come back tomorrow,’” which kind of seems irrational.

她说，“好吧，是的，如果你在商店里，他们四点就关门了，即使你有一大堆杂货也没关系，商店会关门，你必须把东西放回去，然后‘抱歉，你明天可以回来’”，这似乎不合理。

But Germany has weird little quirks and constraints and yet seems to be doing, I don’t know, fairly well in certain ways, or Scandinavia or something.

但德国有一些奇怪的小怪癖和限制，但我不知道，在某些方面似乎做得相当好，或者斯堪的纳维亚半岛或其他地方。

If you give up a little bit of freedom to have more freedom, it’s like a Björk lyric, which is, “I thought I could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of me.” Singapore feels a little bit that way, too.

如果你放弃一点自由来获得更多自由，就像比约克的歌词一样，“我以为我可以组织自由，我是多么斯堪的纳维亚人。”新加坡也有一点这样的感觉。

If you give up a little bit of freedom to have more freedom, it’s like a Björk lyric, which is, “I thought I could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of me.” Singapore feels a little bit that way, too.

如果你放弃一点自由来获得更多自由，就像比约克的歌词一样，“我以为我可以组织自由，我是多么斯堪的纳维亚人。”新加坡也有一点这样的感觉。

What’s your take on — what do these actually do for us?

您对 有何看法—— 这些实际上对我们有什么作用？

How socially productive are they?

他们的社会生产力如何？

You’re of a mixed mind on drug legalization.

您对毒品合法化的看法不一。

I could ask a comparable question about gambling, either legalization or liberalization.

我可以问一个关于赌博的类似问题，无论是合法化还是自由化。

But what’s the net social externality on this mix of sports, fantasy sports, gambling?

但是，体育、梦幻体育和赌博的混合体的净社会外部性是多少？

What’s your view?

你的看法是什么？

I know it’s maybe fun for you.

我知道这对你来说可能很有趣。

One of the things about the regular fantasy football league that you’re in with your friends is that you get a lot out of it.

您与朋友一起参加常规梦幻足球联赛的好处之一是您可以从中受益匪浅。

You get to hang out with people you might not see very often, especially as you get older, into your 30s or 40s or whatnot.

你可以和那些不常见面的人一起出去玩，尤其是当你年纪越来越大，到了 30 多岁、40 多岁或者其他什么时候。

You get to watch a lot of games with more of a rooting interest.

你可以带着更多的兴趣观看很多比赛。

The thing about daily fantasy sports is that a lot of that is really taken away.

关于日常梦幻体育的事情是，其中很多内容确实被拿走了。

It’s very much a brute force approach to watching sports.

这是观看体育比赛的一种蛮力方法。

I did this for a few weeks and then got bored with it.

我这样做了几个星期，然后就厌倦了。

But basically I had a program that would randomly generate high-scoring lineups.

但基本上我有一个程序可以随机生成高分阵容。

Then you scrape that data, and you load it up, 200 lineups at a time, and it kind of took all the joy out of it.

然后你抓取这些数据，然后加载它，一次加载 200 个阵容，这有点让你失去了所有的乐趣。

But that’s not quite what you’re asking, really.

但这并不完全是你要问的，真的。

Right?

正确的？

What am I missing, if anything?

如果有的话，我错过了什么？

But look, it’s the case where, unlike drug legalization — where there are not a lot of countries where drugs apart from marijuana are even there fairly rarely — worldwide, people are much more relaxed about gambling, and it’s normalized.

但你看，情况是，与毒品合法化不同——“在世界范围内，除大麻以外的毒品很少存在的国家并不多”，人们对赌博的态度要轻松得多，而且赌博已经常态化。

You can go to the betting shop, any Ladbrokes anywhere in the United Kingdom and place a bet and it doesn’t seem to ruin society.

你可以去博彩店、英国任何地方的任何立博公司下注，这似乎不会破坏社会。

Maybe you have in low-paying leagues or in tennis, the occasional betting scandal which is not great.

也许你在低薪联赛或网球比赛中偶尔会出现投注丑闻，这并不好。

But I think it’s a way for a substantial number of people to enjoy sports and develop critical thinking skills.

但我认为这是很多人享受运动和培养批判性思维能力的一种方式。

You can go to the betting shop, any Ladbrokes anywhere in the United Kingdom and place a bet and it doesn’t seem to ruin society.

你可以去博彩店、英国任何地方的任何立博公司下注，这似乎不会破坏社会。

Maybe you have in low-paying leagues or in tennis, the occasional betting scandal which is not great.

也许你在低薪联赛或网球比赛中偶尔会出现投注丑闻，这并不好。

But I think it’s a way for a substantial number of people to enjoy sports and develop critical thinking skills.

但我认为这是很多人享受运动和培养批判性思维能力的一种方式。

Again, I say if it’s close, let people do it, and I feel that way about gambling.

我再说一遍，如果情况接近，就让人们去做，我对赌博也有同样的感觉。

Again, I say if it’s close, let people do it, and I feel that way about gambling.

我再说一遍，如果情况接近，就让人们去做，我对赌博也有同样的感觉。

But in that case, you do have examples of many, many Westernized countries where spending on sports is legal, and there seems not to be, at least, grave societal harm.

但在这种情况下，你确实有很多很多西方化国家的例子，在这些国家，体育支出是合法的，而且至少似乎不会造成严重的社会危害。

One of which is you can give up.

其中之一是你可以放弃。

Right?

正确的？

You can say, “Well, I’m not going to pick this battle to fight, because there’s a consequence to lowering this person’s morale, or I’m tired, I have other issues.” So you can capitulate.

你可以说，“好吧，我不会选择这场战斗，因为这会降低这个人的士气，或者我累了，我还有其他问题。”所以你可以投降。

Number two, you can fiat.

第二，你可以发法令。

You can say, “Well, sorry, but I’m ultimately the one who signs your checks,” or my boss signs their checks, but, “This is the line of authority, and we are not going to publish that article.

你可以说，“好吧，抱歉，但最终我是签署你支票的人”，或者我的老板签署了他们的支票，但是，“这是权力范围，我们不会发表那篇文章。

I’ll explain my mind later on.”

稍后我会解释我的想法。”

Number three is you can try and persuade instead.

第三，你可以尝试说服。

Which sounds perfect except persuasion is really, really time consuming.

这听起来很完美，但说服确实非常非常耗时。

Figuring out which ones of those three tactics to use and in what ratio is important.

弄清楚使用这三种策略中的哪一种以及以什么比例使用很重要。

I actually found though, overall, that there’s like a little bit more value in micromanagement than I thought.

但总的来说，我实际上发现微观管理的价值比我想象的要高一些。

Not about everything, but strategically saying, “I’m going to spend a lot of time going into detail on this one.” Or, I guess it’s just mentoring, I guess, is a way to put it.

不是所有事情，而是战略性地说，“我将花很多时间详细讨论这一点。”或者，我想这只是指导，我想，这是一种表达方式。

But it’s a culture of creatives and a culture of journalists, and journalists are strange and wonderful people, and data journalists are still journalists too, but you have to kind of trust people to make their own decision.

但这是一种创意文化和记者文化，记者是奇怪而精彩的人，数据记者仍然是记者，但你必须相信人们会做出自己的决定。

A big thing, too, is kind of figuring out which one of my deputies, the other managers and editors on the staff, what’s my agreement ratio with them.

还有一件大事是弄清楚我的哪一位副手、其他经理和编辑人员，我与他们的一致比例是多少。

It’s incredibly valuable to have someone who, without your intervention, agrees with you 80 percent of the time.

拥有一个在没有你干预的情况下 80% 的时间都同意你观点的人是非常有价值的。

Then the 20 percent of the time that they don’t agree with you, that they’re right as often as not.

然后，有 20% 的时间他们不同意你的观点，但他们往往是对的。

If it goes to 95 percent, then they’re a sycophant, and it’s probably bad.

如果达到 95%，那么他们就是阿谀奉承者，而且情况可能很糟糕。

If it goes to 60 percent, well, then, you might as well do the work yourself.

如果达到 60%，那么，你不妨自己做这个工作。

Figure out the people who will listen to you, but also challenge you at the right times.

找出哪些人会听你的，但也会在适当的时候挑战你。

We’ve done some work on this, too, where when you’re drawing from a more diverse segment of people — there’s something I want to vent about how, like, every book on Amazon, in the long run, gravitates toward having four stars.

我们也在这方面做了一些工作，当你从更多元化的人群中汲取灵感时，我想发泄一下，从长远来看，亚马逊上的每一本书都倾向于获得四颗星。

A lot of 9/11 conspiracy books are rated pretty well on Amazon, because only the conspiracists bother to read them.

很多 9/11 阴谋书籍在亚马逊上的评价都很高，因为只有阴谋论者才会花心思去读它们。

Whereas, Othello or Macbeth or something, everyone reads, a lot of kids have to read it for homework when they don’t want to, necessarily, so they’ll leave a bad review there, potentially.

然而，《奥赛罗》或《麦克白》之类的东西，每个人都会读，但很多孩子在不愿意的时候必须把它当作家庭作业来读，所以他们可能会在那里留下不好的评论。

But I think that problem is more acute than people might realize when it comes to restaurants, where a place is notorious for drawing people who might not like that cuisine as much.

但我认为，当谈到餐馆时，这个问题比人们想象的更为严重，因为餐馆因吸引那些可能不太喜欢该菜系的人而臭名昭著。

People also, when I go — and I used to do more Yelping and stuff like that — if I go to a mom-and-pop place in a small town somewhere and it’s not very good, there’s almost no way that I’m going to leave a negative review for that place.

还有，当我去的时候——我过去常常发出更多的叫喊之类的东西——如果我去某个小镇上的一家夫妻店，而且那里不太好，我几乎不可能给那个地方留下负面评论。

I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I don’t want to — there’s actually studies showing that Yelp reviews can, like, a one-star Yelp review can cost like thousands of dollars in business for a restaurant that has under 50 reviews or something like that.

我不想伤害任何人的感情，我不想 —— 实际上有研究表明，Yelp 评论可以，例如，对于一家评论数低于 50 条或类似内容的餐厅来说，Yelp 的一星评论可能会损失数千美元的业务。

Making sure that you have a mental list of places from all three types of those.

确保您心里有所有这三种类型的地点清单。

There’s some rules that work well in one of those lanes that don’t work well in the others, necessarily.

有些规则在其中一条车道上行之有效，但在其他车道上却不一定行之有效。

In the very high-end restaurants of New York, it’s like so competitive that I think your rule about, order the weirdest thing on the menu, I think there are parts of New York where that probably isn’t true, because it’s so hyper competitive that the menu couldn’t afford to lead people astray.

在纽约的高端餐厅，竞争如此激烈，我认为你的规则是，点菜单上最奇怪的东西，我认为纽约的某些地方可能不是这样，因为竞争如此激烈，菜单不能让人们误入歧途。

Sometimes the thing that the menu is very clearly pointing you toward in New York is the kind of thing that you would want to order instead.

有时，在纽约，菜单非常清楚地向您指出的东西正是您想要点的东西。

That might not be true if you go out to Queens or something like that, where, frankly, pound for pound, probably the food is better than Manhattan or Brooklyn.

如果你去皇后区或类似的地方，情况可能并非如此，坦率地说，那里的食物可能比曼哈顿或布鲁克林更好。

But yeah, you could write a whole book and maybe I will, especially if we have Trump win the election or something, maybe I’ll write a whole book about heuristics for eating food in New York.

但是，是的，你可以写一整本书，也许我会，特别是如果我们让特朗普赢得选举或其他什么，也许我会写一本关于纽约饮食启发法的书。

Question about the weather reporting.

关于天气预报的问题。

There’s some evidence that there’s what is called wet bias, so storms are over-forecast.

有一些证据表明存在所谓的潮湿偏差，因此风暴的预测过高。

Why is that?

这是为什么？

Is this even true?

这是真的吗？

To a first approximation, I think it might make someone a worse forecaster, potentially.

初步估计，我认为这可能会让某人成为更糟糕的预测者。

By the way, another thing about the Trump thing I’ve been thinking about is — so my early view, that Trump had a very low chance — not zero, but very low — of winning the nomination was not based on any formal model, per se.

顺便说一句，关于特朗普的事情，我一直在思考的另一件事是“所以我的早期观点是，特朗普赢得提名的机会非常低”——“不是零，而是非常低”——本身并不是基于任何正式模型。

I wonder what if I had even like a fairly bad model instead?

我想知道如果我什至喜欢一个相当糟糕的模型怎么办？

The good thing about building a statistical model is that it commits you to rules, right?

建立统计模型的好处是它让你遵守规则，对吗？

Instead of just kind of saying, “Well, early polls aren’t very predictive and your prior is it currently probably won’t win, therefore, probably not.”

而不是只是说，“好吧，早期民意调查的预测性不太好，你的先验是它目前可能不会获胜，因此，可能不会。”

It pins you down and says, “Well, OK, early polls aren’t predictive, but at what point do they become more predictive?” When Trump went from being at 25 percent in the polls to 35 percent after Paris and San Bernardino, how significant is that?

它会告诉你，“好吧，早期的民意调查并不能预测，但什么时候它们会变得更有预测性呢？”当特朗普在民调中的支持率从 25% 上升到巴黎和圣贝纳迪诺之后的 35% 时，这有多重要？

To have an answer that is set up by an algorithm you designed ahead of time is actually maybe more helpful than people would think.

获得由您提前设计的算法设置的答案实际上可能比人们想象的更有帮助。

The long way of saying this is that I’m not sure that I’m any better than the average pundit unless I have a model.

长话短说，除非我有模型，否则我不确定自己是否比一般专家更好。

The disciplining effect of a model, doing your thinking in advance, and setting up rules of evidence is probably quite important.

模型的约束作用、提前思考、建立证据规则可能相当重要。

The long way of saying this is that I’m not sure that I’m any better than the average pundit unless I have a model.

长话短说，除非我有模型，否则我不确定自己是否比一般专家更好。

The disciplining effect of a model, doing your thinking in advance, and setting up rules of evidence is probably quite important.

模型的约束作用、提前思考、建立证据规则可能相当重要。

On why so few professional athletes have come out as gay

为什么很少有职业运动员公开承认自己是同性恋

In Hollywood it’s a lot of people, even in Washington, which is a very conservative town, I wouldn’t say it’s a lot of people, but it happens in a quiet kind of way.

在好莱坞，有很多人，即使在华盛顿，这是一个非常保守的城镇，我不会说有很多人，但它以一种安静的方式发生。

In sports, why is there so little?

体育方面，为什么这么少？

If we applied some kind of economic or statistical model, in which sports would you expect to see the new breakthroughs coming when they come?

如果我们应用某种经济或统计模型，您预计哪些运动项目会出现新的突破？

Where the fact that, until fairly recently, until maybe a few years ago, and in many parts of the country, obviously, still now.

事实上，直到最近，直到几年前，在该国的许多地方，显然，现在仍然如此。

Until fairly recently, growing up gay is something that was, if not traumatic, at least required a lot of bandwidth, it requires a lot of energy.

直到最近，同性恋成长即使不是一种创伤，至少也需要大量的带宽，需要大量的精力。

Because the fact that, for example, there’s data from Freakonomics about how hockey players who are born in January, just because they start a little bit earlier than their peer group, that’s a very powerful effect versus being born in November or December instead.

例如，《Freakonomics》有数据表明，一月出生的曲棍球运动员仅仅因为比同龄人开始得早一点，与十一月或十二月出生的人相比，就会产生非常强大的影响。

If something that minor can have that profound an effect, where I don’t know if it’s twice as many NHL players from January as December, then something as important to your identity as being gay in a society that until recently didn’t accept it, that’s a comparative disadvantage.

如果这么小的事情能产生如此深远的影响，我不知道一月份的 NHL 球员数量是否是 12 月的两倍，那么在一个直到最近才接受同性恋的社会中，对你的身份同样重要的事情，那就是一个相对劣势。

Maybe there are also correlations on what kinds of skills and traits people have, I don’t know, but we’ll see.

也许人们拥有什么样的技能和特质也存在相关性，我不知道，但我们会看到。

The prediction, if that theory is true, is that as it’s become more normalized, and now people who are growing up in middle school and high school where being gay is not as much of a disadvantage.

如果这个理论是正确的，那么预测是，随着它变得更加正常化，现在在初中和高中长大的人们，同性恋不再是一个劣势。

Then you’d expect from that generation there to be substantially more gay athletes.

那么你会期望那一代人中会有更多的同性恋运动员。

Listen to baseball players talk.

听棒球运动员说话。

They’re boring as hell.

他们太无聊了。

Right?

正确的？

Kevin Durant or something, these guys are smart and they’re interesting to listen to.

凯文·杜兰特之类的，这些人很聪明，而且听他们的讲话很有趣。

On forecasting

关于预测

Peter Lynch, he had fantastic insights into consumer products.

彼得·林奇（Peter Lynch），他对消费品有着深刻的见解。

Use stuff, see how you like it, buy that stock.

使用东西，看看你喜欢它如何，购买该股票。

He believed that in an age when consumer product stocks were taking off.

他认为，这是一个消费品股票起飞的时代。

Warren Buffett, a certain kind of value investing.

沃伦·巴菲特，某种价值投资。

Worked great for a while, no big success, a lot of big failures in recent times.

有一段时间工作得很好，没有取得什么大的成功，最近却经历了很多大的失败。

Is it possible the so-called true model is always shifting, and there’s a kind of selection bias where different forecasters are elevated and they have their run for three, five, however many years?

是否有可能所谓的真实模型总是在变化，并且存在一种选择偏差，不同的预测者被提升并且他们的运行三年，五年，无论多少年？

Then the true model shifts and what they’re good at isn’t valued.

然后，真正的模式就会发生变化，他们擅长的事情就不会受到重视。

We turn them over and replace them with other forecasters.

我们将他们移交并用其他预报员替换他们。

As, like, our best forecaster, do you worry about this?

作为我们最好的预测员，您担心这个吗？

That’s part of why even though now we’re very immersed in the election cycle, it’s part of why I wanted to make sure that FiveThirtyEight was not just an election site.

这就是为什么即使现在我们非常沉浸在选举周期中，这也是我想确保 FiveThirtyEight 不仅仅是一个选举网站的部分原因。

We’re going to blow an election sooner or later.

我们迟早会搞砸选举。

We might blow this one.

我们可能会搞砸这个。

To be doing a whole diverse array of things both intellectually and commercially is important.

在智力和商业上做各种各样的事情很重要。

The follow-up to that is, “Are there people who have the skills to find the next underweighted opportunity?” Maybe, that’s trickier.

后续问题是，“是否有人有能力找到下一个权重不足的机会？”也许，这更棘手。

I think a lot of people have one or two really good insights, and if you’re very lucky that can take you a long way.

我认为很多人都有一两个非常好的见解，如果你很幸运，这可以带你走很长的路。

This year politically, it’s already a big surprise to me, to a lot of people.

今年在政治上，这对我和很多人来说已经是一个很大的惊喜。

Could it be the case we’re entering a new era where political volatility is higher and basically all forecasters will just do much worse than they have been doing?

我们是否正在进入一个政治波动性更高的新时代，基本上所有预测者的表现都会比以前更糟糕？

Again, looking at examples outside of the United States I think is instructive.

再次，我认为看看美国以外的例子是有启发性的。

Maybe I’m more of a believer in American exceptionalism than I thought.

也许我比我想象的更相信美国例外论。

You see constituencies that are Trumpian in different parts of Europe and have been extant for a long time, so maybe America just got really lucky for 50 years.

你会看到欧洲不同地区的特朗普选区已经存在很长时间了，所以也许美国这50年真的很幸运。

Maybe I’m more of a believer in American exceptionalism than I thought.

也许我比我想象的更相信美国例外论。

You see constituencies that are Trumpian in different parts of Europe and have been extant for a long time, so maybe America just got really lucky for 50 years.

你会看到欧洲不同地区的特朗普选区已经存在了很长时间，所以也许美国这 50 年真的很幸运。

I just read in the Wall Street Journal last year, there were actually zero deaths from jetliner crashes other than terror attacks.

我去年刚刚在《华尔街日报》上看到，除了恐怖袭击之外，飞机失事的死亡人数实际上为零。

We have strange events like the Germanwings pilot flying into the Alps.

我们发生过一些奇怪的事件，比如德国之翼航空公司的飞行员飞入阿尔卑斯山。

Malaysian Air disappears, no one knows why.

马来西亚航空消失了，没有人知道为什么。

The events people talk about, we’re left with only the weird ones.

人们谈论的事件，留给我们的只有奇怪的事件。

Do you think we’re headed toward a future where we’re only going to be talking about weird, very hard to forecast events, precisely because we get good at avoiding a lot of problems and mistakes?

你是否认为我们正走向这样一个未来：我们只会谈论奇怪的、很难预测的事件，而正是因为我们善于避免很多问题和错误？

To the first approximation, everyone is equally good at the edge of their range.

从第一个近似来看，每个人在自己范围的边缘都同样优秀。

The question is how much territory do they cover in between the nonspectacular plays, that we can miss potentially?

问题是，它们在那些平淡无奇的戏剧之间覆盖了多少我们可能会错过的领域？

It’s probably more true — one reason why I like when we forecast sports, is you have a chance to build up your sample size.

这可能更真实——我喜欢预测体育赛事的原因之一是你有机会建立样本量。

A perfectly routine Wizards versus Cavaliers game, where we have the Cavs favorite at home and they win, that counts.

这是一场完美的常规奇才队对阵骑士队的比赛，我们在主场迎战骑士队的最爱，他们赢了，这很重要。

You get hundreds and hundreds of those on the course of the season, whereas in politics you’re more drawn to the spectacular and the weird events.

在整个赛季中，你会遇到成百上千的此类事件，而在政治中，你更容易被壮观和奇怪的事件所吸引。

A lot of models are good heuristics, when conditions are fairly normal.

当条件相当正常时，许多模型都是很好的启发式方法。

They don’t deal all that well with the edge cases, because they’re fully designed, or because you have nonlinearity, or because they have small sample sizes, or whatever else.

它们不能很好地处理边缘情况，因为它们是经过充分设计的，或者因为具有非线性，或者因为它们的样本量较小，或者其他原因。

How well do models deal with the weird cases versus other types of heuristics, I’m not sure.

与其他类型的启发法相比，模型处理奇怪情况的效果如何，我不确定。

Maybe the advantage is more in the baseline cases instead.

也许在基线情况下优势更大。

This is easier in politics than almost any other field, because the political press corps literally is kind of a herd.

这在政治领域比几乎任何其他领域都更容易，因为政治记者团实际上是一群人。

It’s the perfect example of it.

这是一个完美的例子。

You have a few hundred journalists who travel around together, who are all reading one another on Twitter, who are all talking to one another.

有几百名记者一起旅行，他们都在推特上互相阅读，他们都在互相交谈。

It’s not 500 really smart people.

这不是500个真正聪明的人。

It’s one or two really smart people, and 489 followers instead.

只有一两个真正聪明的人，以及 489 名追随者。

I don’t know.

我不知道。

We get ourselves in a little bit of trouble I think at FiveThirtyEight at times, because we are fairly combative.

我认为在 FiveThirtyEight，我们有时会遇到一些麻烦，因为我们相当好斗。

For a long time I thought, “Well this is kind of part of my personality, and the kind of more happy warrior data side is more part of it too.”

很长一段时间我都在想，“嗯，这是我性格的一部分，而更快乐的战士数据也是其中的一部分。”

They’re actually kind of sides of the same coin.

它们实际上是同一枚硬币的两面。

When you read the New York Times or the Post, not basic factual statements where they say, “Today, Donald Trump was in Arizona,” but when there’s a piece of analysis that isn’t necessarily obvious, to say, “Boy, there might be a 40 percent chance that that’s basically wrong.”

当你阅读《纽约时报》或《华盛顿邮报》时，不是基本的事实陈述，他们说“今天，唐纳德·特朗普在亚利桑那州”，而是当有一条不一定显而易见的分析时，你会说，“天哪，这可能有 40% 的可能性，这基本上是错误的。”

That leaves you in a weird place kind of.

这让你处于一个奇怪的地方。

But to believe that is, I think, the source of a lot of the healthy skepticism that we have and also some of our failings sometimes.

但我认为，相信这一点是我们许多健康怀疑的根源，有时也是我们一些失败的根源。

Now this is a trick question because it’s a hereditary monarchy, but here’s my background question.

这是一个棘手的问题，因为它是世袭君主制，但这是我的背景问题。

Intelligence agencies and scholars did very poorly forecasting the Arab Spring and did very poorly forecasting ISIS.

情报机构和学者对阿拉伯之春和伊斯兰国的预测都非常糟糕。

So you’re put on the case, someone from Washington, McLean, wherever.

所以你被派去处理这个案子，来自华盛顿、麦克莱恩，无论什么地方的人。

They call you in.

他们叫你进去。

They say, “What variables should we be looking at to understand the Middle East that we’re underweighting right now?”

他们说，“我们应该关注哪些变量来了解我们目前正在减持的中东地区？”

I know it’s a tough question, but who will be the next president of the United Arab Emirates?

我知道这是一个棘手的问题，但谁将成为阿拉伯联合酋长国的下一任总统？

Will there be a next president?

会有下一任总统吗？

How do you think about what’s happening there?

您如何看待那里发生的事情？

Black swans or a regularized process?

黑天鹅还是正规化流程？

On Supreme Court picks and vacation tips

关于最高法院的选择和度假提示

Caren Louise Photographs

卡伦·路易丝照片

I would tend to think that — my hunch and this is just a hunch, the theory is that either Obama nominates someone with unimpeachable credentials and makes Republicans look very unreasonable or he makes a pick that trolls Republicans and plays to Democratic base.

我倾向于认为，“我的预感，这只是预感，理论是，要么奥巴马提名一个拥有无可挑剔资历的人，让共和党人看起来非常不合理，要么他做出一个恶搞共和党人并迎合民主党基础的人选。

I’m more of a believer in the former as Obama’s mode of doing things.

我更相信前者是奥巴马的做事模式。

I think he’d push things in their way and have someone who might just be at the risk of pissing off the liberal base, but the Republicans have to look ridiculous opposing, as opposed to the other way around.

我认为他会以他们的方式推动事情，并让一个可能冒着激怒自由派基础的风险的人，但共和党人必须表现出可笑的反对态度，而不是相反。

If you apply data analysis to those trips, what do you learn about what makes for a good trip and what can you do or what can we all do to have better trips?

如果您将数据分析应用于这些旅行，您会了解到什么是一次美好的旅行，以及您可以做什么或我们大家可以做什么来拥有更好的旅行？

We drove, we got to this strip mall on the edge of town and they’re like, “You have to wait in line two hours for us to replace your phone.” So I didn’t have a phone in Hawaii, and it was the most amazing thing pretty much.

我们开车到达城镇边缘的一家购物中心，他们说：“你必须排队两个小时，我们才能更换你的手机。”所以我在夏威夷没有电话，这几乎是最令人惊奇的事情。

Q&A

问答

We actually are doing that a little bit with the Oscars this year.

实际上，今年我们在奥斯卡颁奖典礼上就做了一些这样的事情。

We found eight different people who created different models, and we’re seeing how well they do.

我们找到了八位不同的人，他们创建了不同的模型，我们正在观察他们的表现如何。

Of course six awards is not anywhere near a sufficient sample size to deal with something like that.

当然，六个奖项的样本量不足以处理此类问题。

I don’t know.

我不知道。

I’m very process-driven as a person.

我是一个非常注重流程的人。

For me, a lot of the joy is in thinking through the process of it, so reading a book like this is really useful, because I talk about a process I think is pretty great.

对我来说，很多乐趣在于思考这个过程，所以读这样的书真的很有用，因为我谈论了一个我认为非常棒的过程。

But to actually publish the projections, in some sense, is almost beside the point, in the sense that you’re still probably dealing with sample sizes that are too small to really tell you all that much.

但从某种意义上说，实际发布预测几乎是题外话，因为您可能仍在处理太小的样本量，无法真正告诉您所有信息。

When you start to do that, then I think it takes folks away from thinking about process and heuristics for forecasting.

当你开始这样做时，我认为这会让人们不再思考预测的过程和启发式方法。

That’s kind of an unsatisfying answer, I guess.

我想，这是一个令人不满意的答案。

Remember, one reason why — and I’d say Trump’s a fairly heavy underdog if he wins the nomination.

请记住，一个原因是，如果特朗普赢得提名，我会说他是一个相当严重的失败者。

But it’s a conditional probability.

但这是一个条件概率。

Conditional on having won the GOP nomination, Trump will have had to display some staying power, some acumen, because sooner or later he will have to get beyond 35 percent to win 50 percent or so, and probably will have done something to improve his image with people who are not in his core constituency.

以赢得共和党提名为条件，特朗普必须表现出一些耐力和智慧，因为迟早他必须超过 35% 才能赢得 50% 左右的选票，并且可能会采取一些措施来改善他在非核心选民中的形象。

But yeah, it would be pretty unprecedented, certainly.

但是，是的，这肯定是史无前例的。

I wonder if you have to adjust — in baseball, you have to adjust stats for the era, where if you’re in the home run or steroid era, then 50 home runs doesn’t matter as much.

我想知道你是否需要调整——在棒球中，你必须根据时代调整统计数据，如果你处于本垒打或类固醇时代，那么 50 个本垒打并不那么重要。

Maybe now, Obama with a 48 percent approval rating, is at a 56 park-adjusted approval rating.

也许现在，奥巴马的支持率是 48%，经过公园调整后的支持率是 56%。

I’m not sure, maybe.

我不确定，也许吧。

But as a journalist, for example, to have something I can say this is a benchmark, and I understand what it’s doing, and I can explain what it’s doing, and I can also understand what the limitations of it might be, and so I know which direction to lean relative to that baseline.

但作为一名记者，例如，有一些东西我可以说这是一个基准，我理解它在做什么，我可以解释它在做什么，我也可以理解它可能有什么局限性，所以我知道相对于该基准应该偏向哪个方向。

It’s more useful than a place where you just say, “Well, we fed some data into a random number generator, or a magic machine, and here’s what it spit out.”

它比你只是说“好吧，我们将一些数据输入随机数生成器或魔术机，然后它输出的结果如下”更有用。

For example, I highly prefer — this is going off on a tangent — but I prefer regression-based modeling to machine learning, where you can’t really explain anything.

例如，我非常喜欢 —— 这偏离了方向 —— 但我更喜欢基于回归的建模而不是机器学习，因为在机器学习中你无法真正解释任何事情。

To me, the whole value is in the explanation.

对我来说，全部价值在于解释。

But I do think likewise, people, when you explain it and say, “Hey, we probably have the same interests here in mind,” to say this is actually pretty simple once you start peeling away the BS.

但我确实也这么认为，当你解释它并说“嘿，我们可能有相同的兴趣”时，一旦你开始剥去废话，说这实际上非常简单。

To me, that approach works a lot better in the long run than the approach of saying, arguments from authority, “Well, this is rigorous, and empirical, and objective, so therefore believe the numbers.” I think explaining to people why it’s actually not all that complicated, and why you’re making very defensible assumptions how that leads you to an answer that might surprise them.

对我来说，从长远来看，这种方法比权威论证的方法要有效得多，“嗯，这是严格的、经验性的、客观的，因此请相信数字。”我认为向人们解释为什么它实际上并没有那么复杂，以及为什么你做出了非常合理的假设，这如何引导你得到一个可能让他们感到惊讶的答案。

One of the reasons why I was initially skeptical about Trump is that America has a history of not nominating candidates, and electing candidates, rightly, who are blatantly unfit for office.

我最初对特朗普持怀疑态度的原因之一是，美国有不提名候选人的历史，而且正确地选举了公然不适合担任公职的候选人。

The problem is that all those errors were in the same direction, so Republicans won when a lot of races around the country that they were underdogs in — not huge underdogs, except Virginia was almost a major upset.

问题是，所有这些错误都是朝着同一个方向，所以共和党在全国各地的许多比赛中获胜，而他们在这些比赛中都处于劣势——不是巨大的劣势，除了弗吉尼亚州几乎是一个大冷门。

But yeah, it’s a much purer form of the exercise to do data mining on congressional elections and weighing polls versus fundamentals and whatever else.

但是，是的，这是一种更纯粹的练习形式，可以对国会选举进行数据挖掘，并权衡民意调查与基本面等因素。

What are your thoughts on more computationally intensive methods like agent-based modeling for dealing with these things, like you mentioned herd behavior, that make some of these analyses more difficult?

您对计算密集型方法有何看法，例如基于代理的建模来处理这些事情，就像您提到的羊群行为一样，这些方法使某些分析变得更加困难？

If you have reason to know exactly how certain people would behave and how they behave as a system, then agent-based modeling could give you insights you couldn’t get from regression analysis.

如果您有理由确切地知道某些人的行为方式以及他们作为一个系统的行为方式，那么基于代理的建模可以为您提供从回归分析中无法获得的见解。

On the other hand, if you’re somewhat wrong about those assumptions, then the things could go very haywire in a hurry.

另一方面，如果你的这些假设有些错误，那么事情可能会很快变得非常混乱。

When I’m building models myself now, I spend a lot more time thinking about the edge cases, say, let’s put some really weird inputs in here that are on the edge of plausible, and see how the model responds to those.

当我现在自己构建模型时，我会花更多时间思考边缘情况，比如说，让我们在这里放入一些非常奇怪的输入，这些输入处于合理的边缘，然后看看模型如何响应这些输入。

Maybe you have a function that’s approximately linear, but can’t be at the edge case.

也许你有一个近似线性的函数，但不能处于边缘情况。

It would say that, for example, if you have a model saying that Hillary Clinton will get 106 percent of the vote in Washington, DC, or something, against Trump, I used to think, “Well, who really cares?

例如，如果你有一个模型说希拉里·克林顿将在华盛顿特区获得 106% 的选票，或者其他什么，反对特朗普，我曾经想，“好吧，谁真正在乎呢？

She’s going to win DC anyway.”

无论如何，她都会赢得华盛顿特区。”

I mentioned reasons to be pessimistic earlier.

我之前提到了悲观的原因。

A reason to be optimistic as a fan of democracy is that you are seeing voice given to quirkier ideologies that are no less intellectually coherent in the kind of Democratic versus Republican axis that we have in the United States.

作为民主的支持者，乐观的一个理由是，你会看到一些奇怪的意识形态的声音，这些意识形态在思想上与我们在美国所拥有的民主党与共和党的轴心一样一致。

I believe in the notion of a filter bubble, where people surround themselves where they’re getting like information and not confronting themselves with unpleasant facts, necessarily.

我相信过滤气泡的概念，人们将自己包围在一个可以获取类似信息的地方，而不必面对令人不快的事实。

You saw that a lot during the 2012 election, where the polling was a lot more straightforward than it is this time around, and people still were cherry-picking data to tell themselves that Romney might win.

你在 2012 年大选中经常看到这样的情况，当时的民意调查比这一次要简单得多，人们仍然在挑选数据来告诉自己罗姆尼可能会获胜。

You saw Democrats doing the reverse, by the way, in the 2014 midterms, more or less.

顺便说一句，在 2014 年中期选举中，民主党或多或少地做了相反的事情。

But yeah, as someone who’s a critic of media, I think the way people consume media is important, and has probably fairly large effects on our politics.

但是，是的，作为媒体批评者，我认为人们消费媒体的方式很重要，并且可能对我们的政治产生相当大的影响。

You may see where I’m going with this.

你可能会明白我的意思。

You strike me as someone who would rather predict rather than influence, but do you see yourself playing into this zeitgeist where you could carry some weight in this election?

在我看来，你是一个更愿意预测而不是施加影响的人，但你是否认为自己正在融入这种时代精神，从而在这次选举中发挥一定的影响力？

At the same time, the fact is that all news coverage is influential, and I would say at the very least, we promise some self-awareness, that we’re aware that the way the events are covered by the press can affect voters’ views.

与此同时，事实是所有新闻报道都有影响力，我至少会说，我们承诺有一定的自我意识，我们意识到媒体报道事件的方式会影响选民的观点。

Sometimes the press can be surprised that it doesn’t go the way they expect, but you can have these big feedback loops.

有时媒体可能会感到惊讶，事情没有按照他们预期的方式进行，但你可以有这些大的反馈循环。

I’m surprised how difficult it is.

我很惊讶这有多困难。

I think one big edge we have — I’m glad that you read us — but I think one big edge we have over, say, the New York Times or something is that we can talk about the media as a political actor.

我认为我们有一个很大的优势——“我很高兴你读到我们的文章”——但是我认为我们相对于《纽约时报》之类的媒体有一个很大的优势，那就是我们可以把媒体当作一个政治演员来谈论。

We are the media, too, and so I’m aware of the circularity of that.

我们也是媒体，所以我知道这一点的循环性。

Frankly, I think one reason why during the primaries sometimes the conservative sites are more interesting to me than liberal sites, is that they also start off being more suspicious of the media, sometimes in ways that I think are wrong, like about the polls in 2012.

坦率地说，我认为在初选期间有时保守派网站比自由派网站更让我感兴趣的原因之一是，他们也开始对媒体更加怀疑，有时以我认为错误的方式怀疑，比如 2012 年的民意调查。

But I think having that skepticism and seeing the media as a political actor instead of a benevolent umpire is to a first approximation the right way to do things, and that’s reflected in our coverage, I guess sometimes at the risk of being a little bit hypocritical, potentially.

但我认为，持有这种怀疑态度，将媒体视为政治演员而不是仁慈的裁判，初步近似是正确的做事方式，这反映在我们的报道中，我想有时可能会冒着有点虚伪的风险。

We do try and be very transparent about what we think is a fact, what’s an opinion, what’s an analysis, what is a provocation.

我们确实尝试对我们认为的事实、观点、分析、挑衅保持非常透明。

One reason why I like your blog is that you have a lot of provocations.

我喜欢你的博客的原因之一是你有很多挑衅。

Sometimes you put the Tyrone label on it, but it’s clear what they are.

有时你会在上面贴上泰隆的标签，但它们是什么却一目了然。

It’s clear that they’re provocations meant to incite discussion and debate, and so we’ll have a few of those, too, at times.

很明显，它们是旨在煽动讨论和辩论的挑衅，所以我们有时也会有一些这样的事情。

Speaking in the first person, I think, is important, and breaking from the voice of God where “A storm cloud gathered on New Hampshire today, and the voters decided that — .” Speaking as a subjective individual trying to understand what the objective world is like is a lot of what we’re all about.

我认为，以第一人称说话很重要，并且要脱离上帝的声音，“今天，新罕布什尔州有乌云聚集，选民决定 —— ”。作为一个主观的个体，试图理解客观世界是什么样子，这就是我们所做的很多事情。

It’s not for everyone, but I think that should be reflected at least in the tone and approach of our coverage, even where we wind up getting things wrong in the end.

它并不适合所有人，但我认为这至少应该反映在我们报道的语气和方法中，即使我们最终会出错。