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538 absolutely is horserace coverage, but unlike basically all the other election coverage, it's rigorous, impartial, and intellectually honest.


Eh, eye of the beholder.

I honestly mostly follow the sports odds and I’d argue that Nate’s models are some of the most biased out there for that.


> Eh, eye of the beholder.

It's really not, which is why quantitative models have real value. You don't have to argue that he's biased, you just have to point to the evidence. But your whole comment is indistinguishable from someone with sour grapes who is simply casting aspersions on his track record without being willing to analyze it properly. At the very least, you ought to specifically identify what kind of biases his predictions have shown; he leaves himself wide open to being proven wrong, so it's only fair for you to do the same.


He regularly underperforms the Vegas line.

He makes bad models.

Nate put 2021/22 warriors at 0.5% to win, Vegas was +900. Nate put 2020/21 bucks at 10% to win, Vegas was +550. If you can’t even come close to beating the line, you’re not a good model. He’s just transparent about his variables.

Edit: To be clear I don’t gamble, I just follow sports and like data analysis, so this isn’t a bank account thing.


Which non-538 models consistently outperform 538's models?

EDIT: (cause I can't reply to the below comment) my question was what model beats 538, not which betting market beats 538. yeah, duh, the Vegas line beats 538, because it beats literally all publicly available models. It'd take a really disastrous gambling market failure for anything else to happen.


Literally the Vegas line?

Nate put 2021/22 warriors at 0.5% to win, Vegas was +900.

Nate put 2020/21 bucks at 10% to win, Vegas was +550.

If you can’t even come close to beating the line, you’re not a good model. He’s just transparent about his variables.

> EDIT: (cause I can't reply to the below comment) my question was what model beats 538, not which betting market beats 538. yeah, duh, the Vegas line beats 538, because it beats literally all publicly available models. It'd take a really disastrous gambling

Lines aren’t built that way. They’re set by books to offset their risk. They’re based on a bunch of (usually drunk) wetware computers with huge biases (don’t believe me, look at any Dodgers line when they have an obviously bad pitcher matchup).

If your model is worse than that, then what’s the point of a model?

To the point of bookie models, those are based on how they think people will bet, not on who they think they will win. The point of books is to be outcome neutral.


> Lines aren’t built that way. They’re set by books to offset their risk.

They're initially set by bookies based on their models, but then pretty quickly evolve to a market-based mechanism.




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