Predicting Presidential Confidence

My predictive ability this presidential election matches my forecasting record on stock market timing - clearly 100% wrong.  As a statistician, it is rather embarrassing for the profession when so many people were surprised by the result of Donald Trump winning the electoral college vote.  Yet my training in this field gives me amply opportunity to defend the analysis before and after the election.

The best statistician is " 99.7% confident that he is three standard deviations from the mean".  Which means (no pun intended) that he is 100% confident that your outcome is impossible to predict.

Predicting human behavior (which is an attempt at prophecy) is exactly what caused me interest in statistics.. Yet time and time again human behavior surprises us.  That is the beauty in life with others- and keeps everything interesting.

My emotions about the election have less to do with ideology and more to do with being tickled about the very surprise that seemingly occurred. Are events really random?  Is there an interwoven master plan and designer?  Is it some combination of both of these with a dash of free will sprinkled on top?

I am confident about predicting Donald Trumps actions -  He will be unpredictable.


"We plan, We predict and God smiles"