Author: Joey deVilla

Posted without comment, but with this set of close-ups:

…Nate Silver, who used data and did the math to accurately call the election. It all sounds very Star Trek-y: using a mathematical model that took in poll data, weighting each data source according to how accurate it’s been in the past, and factoring in other conditions that will affect the result. The talking heads in the media who cover the politics beat will have a harder time dismissing “cold equations” in favour of “warm human intuition” — as if mathematics wasn’t as equally human as “that gut feeling”.

The recent high-profile understandable-by-Joe-Average examples of how “doing the math” can pay off in real life — first Moneyball, now this — might spark a short-term interest in statistics and math in general. I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a CNN anchor explaining the differences between mean, median and mode to an audience that has trouble calculating a tip (I’d see it as a good start), but perhaps we might see more news features on how a little math can help improve your life, such as a piece on The Quantified Self, visualizing how much sugar is in that soft drink or the incredible power of compound interest. We don’t face threats that capture the American imagination the way that Sputnik did in 1957 and started the STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics) boom, but there are such threats to which greater STEM knowledge can lead us to solutions. A success story like Silver’s election prediction is just the kind of thing we need.

Macleans columnist Colby Cosh, one of my more seemingly unlikely internet friends, is one of Silver’s more reasonable critics. He’s taken some drubbing from Silver’s true believers (he refers to them as “Silverbacks”), but I think he makes a good point. While Silver’s method is arguably more “scientific” than a pundit’s gut instinct, he hasn’t done one thing that all good scientists and mathematicians do: he hasn’t shown his work. While we know the broad strokes of his model, the precise details are secret and thus the model is not falsifiable (a science term that’s often confused by laypeople — it means that if the model is false, there is a way to prove that it is so; this is a cornerstone of the scientific method). In a math exam, you don’t get full marks if you don’t show your work, and for this reason, Silver shouldn’t get full marks either (a decent mark, yes, but not a perfect score). There’s also the matter that like any predictive model, it won’t be correct all time, as Colby points out in this recent piece. Pure, blind faith in Silver’s model, just because it’s tagged with the impressive labels of “scientific” or “mathematical” is no different from believing the predictions of a psychic or a deck of tarot cards — you’re simply following a different mysterious force that you don’t really understand.

I’ll close with this: from one guy who juggles symbols for living to another — congratulations, Nate Silver!

On the results of the US election: The Accordion Dude abides.

Update

Reader Chris Charabaruk stated in the comments that he prefers this image:

Click the photo to see it at full size.

Last night, TechCrunch came to town and invited 1,000 people to come and mingle at the Steam Whistle Brewery. Anitra and I attended the event, which was packed solid. Even with 1,000 free tickets available, there were still a large number of people waitlisted.

The photo above shows the party floor as things were winding down. At the start of the party, the place was packed solid, with local tech startup people watching demos put on by startups who managed to pull together the $1,500 sponsor fee, catching up with each other and trying to meet new co-founders, collaborators, funders and employees.

A good number of the Usual Suspects were there, including Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan and Rob Tyrie, pictured above. Also present were some of my former colleagues at Shopify, including Blair Beckwith, Brian Alkerton and Mark Hayes, Shoplocket co-founders Katherine Hague and Andrew Louis, Anna Starasts from Grossman Dorland, James Woods from Shifthub (I worked with him at Tucows, along with Greg Frank, who was also there), Julie Tyios (who I cracked up with my Ford Canada interview), Vahid Jozi (whom I met while in Ottawa), Austin Ziegler, Jon from Venio, Rohan “Silver Fox” Jayasekara, John Gauthier and Jean-Luc David, to name a few. Special out-of-town mention has to go to Greg “Gregarious” Narain.

John Biggs and Yours Truly at TechCrunch Toronto.

My moment of the evening: when John Biggs, TechCrunch’s East Coast Editor saw me and asked “Is that the Accordion Guy?” It turns out that’s he’s been a reader of The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century for some time! I’ve been following his stuff since he was Editor-in-Chief at Gizmodo, so the recognition made me feel like a rock star — a very nice birthday present!

Events like this are good for our local startup ecosystem. The chance meetings and exchange of ideas at shindigs like this have led to all sorts of things: friendships, collaborations, partnerships, employment and even getting some funding, but most importantly, they lend that sense of cohesiveness necessary to creating an environment where little businesses built on big ideas can thrive. My thanks to the folks at TechCrunch, the sponsors and all who came for making this event a fun and productive one!

You can read the TechCrunch summary of the event here.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

All this and more at the Dog Shaming site.

It’s your chance to use your baby as a billboard that announces to the world “Mommy reads poorly-written softcore S&M novels”. Take it from a divorcé having the best midlife crisis ever: there’s so much good porn and so many fine kinky people out there. Don’t settle for Fifty Shades, the McDonald’s of smut!

Get out there and vote! You live in a democracy only if you use your voice.

(And by the bye: using a revolver to hammer in nails is probably not a good idea.)