{"id":2038,"date":"2008-11-15T13:12:47","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T19:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/11\/15\/prediction-contest-results\/"},"modified":"2021-09-17T11:47:13","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T18:47:13","slug":"prediction-contest-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/15\/prediction-contest-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Prediction Contest Results!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many have been asking: who won our famous <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/06\/19\/presidential-prediction-contest\/\">Presidential Prediction Contest<\/a>? The task, you will remember, was to predict how the popular vote would be distributed between the two major candidates, throwing away third-party votes and ignoring the electoral college altogether, expressed as a percentage of votes for Obama. So if the total number of votes for Obama is <em>V<sub>O<\/sub><\/em> , and the total number for McCain is <em>V<sub>M<\/sub><\/em> , the number you were predicting is<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/ql-cache\/quicklatex.com-d867eb0528f4de356e8572d206ab70fc_l3.png\" class=\"ql-img-inline-formula quicklatex-auto-format\" alt=\"&#92;&#100;&#105;&#115;&#112;&#108;&#97;&#121;&#115;&#116;&#121;&#108;&#101;&#123;&#102;&#32;&#61;&#32;&#92;&#102;&#114;&#97;&#99;&#123;&#49;&#48;&#48;&#32;&#86;&#95;&#79;&#125;&#123;&#40;&#86;&#95;&#79;&#43;&#86;&#95;&#77;&#41;&#125;&#125;&#44;&#32;&#46;\" title=\"Rendered by QuickLaTeX.com\" height=\"41\" width=\"133\" style=\"vertical-align: -17px;\"\/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been delaying the announcement of the results, as the entries were tightly bunched and it takes time for votes to trickle in. Indeed, Alaska still seems to be problematic, but patience is thin and it&#8217;s time to declare a winner! Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/07\/03\/prediction-contest-update\/\">here<\/a> to be reminded of who had staked out which bits of territory. Here are the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_presidential_election,_2008\">vote totals<\/a> as of today:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Barack Obama:<\/strong> 66,679,600<\/p>\n<p><strong>John McCain:<\/strong> 58,227,508<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>which implies<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>f<\/em> = 53.38.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/07\/03\/prediction-contest-update\/#comment-41185\">relevant entries<\/a>, courtesy of wqz, are<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>( 52.81689, 53.10869): Tim<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>( 53.10869, 53.32282): Elliot<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>( 53.32282, 53.47922): Anonymous Snowoboarder<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>( 53.47922, 53.74739): Gabe<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>( 53.74739, 53.78569): joulesm<\/ul>\n<p>And so the winner is:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/06\/19\/presidential-prediction-contest\/#comment-40590\">Anonymous Snowoboarder!<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Who, I am guessing, may have mistyped their name. But when you have mad prediction skills like that, who cares about typographical irregularities?<\/p>\n<p>Here were the distribution of predictions near the right value:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2008\/11\/ppcontest5.jpg\" alt=\"ppcontest5.jpg\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting to note that the contest was announced in late June, just when Obama was hitting his summer peak of popularity (which was not as pronounced as his fall peak of popularity). I wonder how the predictions would have gone had we done the contest in September?<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"pollstercom-generalelection.jpg\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2008\/11\/15\/prediction-contest-results\/2041\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2041\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2008\/11\/pollstercom-generalelection.jpg\" alt=\"pollstercom-generalelection.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many have been asking: who won our famous Presidential Prediction Contest? The task, you will remember, was to predict how the popular vote would be distributed between the two major candidates, throwing away third-party votes and ignoring the electoral college altogether, expressed as a percentage of votes for Obama. So if the total number of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13800,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions\/13800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}