:00:02. > :00:12.world's busiest ports. You're watching BBC News. Now, it's time
:00:12. > :00:25.
:00:25. > :00:28.for Hardtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk. He is seen as a political
:00:29. > :00:31.astrologer with an uncanny ability to get it right. His prediction of
:00:31. > :00:35.the US presidential election result last year was spot on when most
:00:35. > :00:38.pundits were saying the race was too close to call. No wonder then
:00:38. > :00:43.that Nate Silver is being credited with re-shaping the art and science
:00:43. > :00:45.of political forecasting. But has he robbed electoral campaigns of
:00:45. > :00:55.their substance by reducing them to mere statistics and number-
:00:55. > :01:24.
:01:24. > :01:31.Nate Silver welcome. When it comes to elections, what is the point of
:01:31. > :01:37.prediction. Why not wait and see why people vote? People like to
:01:37. > :01:41.prepare for the future. The word for custom means planning under
:01:41. > :01:47.conditions of uncertainty. Trying to plan who the next president
:01:47. > :01:51.might be, for your personal life or for investing. Good information
:01:51. > :01:57.instead of the bad information you may get from the media. Even if it
:01:57. > :02:03.is a prediction as late as before an election result, what is some
:02:03. > :02:08.point of that? People cannot really make plans. There is a lot of horse
:02:08. > :02:13.race coverage in the States. Some people follow it like they may
:02:13. > :02:17.follow sport. The coverage is often poor when exaggerate how dynamic
:02:17. > :02:21.the horse race is. They claim the candidate behind welcome back and
:02:21. > :02:27.often they will not. They are not looking what the voters are telling
:02:27. > :02:31.them. They are superimposing the pundits's viewpoint on the
:02:31. > :02:38.information. We try to do this and we want to be accurate and truthful
:02:38. > :02:42.and strive to be more scientific with projections. Your predictions
:02:42. > :02:46.consist of three parts, dynamic modelling, data analysis and human
:02:46. > :02:52.judgement. Most people would say you have proved yourself on the
:02:52. > :02:56.first two. How good is your human judgement? She would have to talk
:02:56. > :03:03.to my friends and partners. What you think about your human
:03:03. > :03:08.judgement, due are famous for these computer models? A lot of people
:03:08. > :03:11.are very enamoured with this idea you can make a prediction based on
:03:11. > :03:17.your gut feeling. The evidence shows and a lot of feelings that
:03:17. > :03:26.gut feelings are not very accurate most of the time. Special when it
:03:26. > :03:31.comes to estimating probabilities, we do not really know how the maths
:03:31. > :03:35.works very well. Elgar often leads us astray. You do except it human
:03:35. > :03:44.judgement forms an important part of forecasting and predictions. It
:03:44. > :03:48.is messy? Has people analyse more different factors, it is messy.
:03:48. > :03:53.Whether that judgement, especially if it comes from a pundit that is
:03:53. > :03:58.out of touch with what voters think, and they are going to cocktail
:03:58. > :04:03.parties at Georgetown and serving other A-League friends, the chatter
:04:03. > :04:07.they here, may not be very useful. But if they hear from the campaigns
:04:07. > :04:11.noise and to listen to put that as providing valuable insight and
:04:11. > :04:15.information. Sometimes, sticking with simple things like poles that
:04:15. > :04:22.give us the voters the chance to express themselves to wreck there
:04:22. > :04:26.is a better approach. You process statistics and make models and
:04:26. > :04:30.predictions, when you hear what somebody li?I ? somebody liitish
:04:31. > :04:37.pollsters said he found that you guv, he applauds you and says you
:04:37. > :04:41.are brilliant at taking a lot of data, understanding it, he says
:04:41. > :04:46.without opinion polls and surveys they would be no Nate Silver. You
:04:46. > :04:49.did well because the polls did well. If you have taken every just of
:04:49. > :04:55.those polls you would have reached the same conclusion? I could have
:04:55. > :05:00.done that. Anybody could. But you get all this attention? They is
:05:00. > :05:05.because in politics the one-eyed man is the king in the land of the
:05:05. > :05:08.blind. The coverage is so poor a lot of the time. You have to sell
:05:08. > :05:15.newspapers and television programmes to say it will be a
:05:15. > :05:19.close race. You want to appear unbiased. Obviously, people
:05:19. > :05:24.involved in politics directly were trying to spin a narrative of how
:05:24. > :05:28.the party may win, a lot of inaccurate information. When he
:05:28. > :05:35.sees the did well because the polls were good and you manage to key in
:05:35. > :05:41.is that a key point that anybody could have done it. I said before
:05:41. > :05:47.the election, I would get too much attention of Barack Obama 1 and too
:05:47. > :05:51.much blame if Mitt Romney won. I look at probabilities, there is a
:05:51. > :05:55.margin of error with polls. We look at how accurate polling has been.
:05:55. > :06:01.You have many Poles from many different states which can increase
:06:01. > :06:09.the accuracy. That can influence whether you place a bet. We do not
:06:09. > :06:15.know what is going to happen, it is about Wayne information and data
:06:15. > :06:21.within the context of uncertainty. Did you generate any date yourself?
:06:21. > :06:28.Were each generate data with the models. Do you actually bring in
:06:28. > :06:33.fresh data yourself? I am not a pollster. You're likely lead on the
:06:33. > :06:40.work of opinion polls? The use economic data and a judgement as
:06:40. > :06:46.well in a review of the empirical scientist. I am very widely read.
:06:46. > :06:50.We do not rely on spin from campaigns. We do not rely on
:06:50. > :06:54.conventional wisdom which is not worth much in Washington DC. We
:06:54. > :06:59.rely on poles which reflect what individual people say. Polls that
:06:59. > :07:06.go out and interview action will voters and what they think about
:07:07. > :07:11.the election. As Michael Gerson a prominent member of the Republican
:07:11. > :07:15.establishment, an aide to George bush said, elections are not a
:07:15. > :07:21.mathematical equation? These are the people that thought Mitt Romney
:07:21. > :07:27.would win. That may be the case, there. Is your approach trivialises
:07:27. > :07:37.politics. It's trivialises their ability to spin and confuse people.
:07:37. > :07:39.
:07:39. > :07:46.They have an interest in a site like mine which takes the view from
:07:46. > :07:54.data and best practices. They were proven wrong last November. Michael
:07:54. > :07:58.Gerson makes the point. Why should we be listening to him? He is a
:07:58. > :08:03.senior member of the bush establishment. Why is that a
:08:03. > :08:08.credential? Used to measure public opinion. The measure what people
:08:08. > :08:16.think and how voters may behave. build models based on polling data
:08:16. > :08:23.and economic data. To discuss what forms public opinion. As the
:08:23. > :08:31.election came to a close, we talked to Nate Silver's statistical model,
:08:31. > :08:36.there was not much about social mobility and debt. He said your
:08:36. > :08:40.approach was devoid of substance and trivialises politics.
:08:40. > :08:47.approach is to write a better version of the horse race coverage
:08:47. > :08:50.we see in the United States media every day. It should not be
:08:50. > :08:57.difficult to look at the polls and take an average of them and see who
:08:57. > :09:02.is head. And why do not we trust parties since to talk about the war
:09:02. > :09:06.if they cannot get basic facts right. Adding up one converses the
:09:06. > :09:12.other. I'm not sure why we should listen to sum up like that on
:09:12. > :09:16.complex issues. Because he is a Republican? Because he is wrong. I
:09:16. > :09:23.think he's deluded about what reality is. His biases have
:09:23. > :09:28.overcome his ability to see the polls. I am biased? Are you vised?
:09:28. > :09:34.They everyone is biased. They historian Kim Stanley is accusing
:09:34. > :09:42.you of predicting a win and making him look like a winner, and it is
:09:42. > :09:52.your goal to create, convincing Obama will win because he is a
:09:52. > :09:54.winner. I am telling you what Tim Stanley says. If you take two
:09:54. > :09:59.people are not credible and take the arguments and ignore lots of
:09:59. > :10:09.other people in the field that think highly of my research. It
:10:09. > :10:13.makes for better TV. I was many same that. Looking at data from
:10:13. > :10:19.other interviews to create better ratings for this show what type of
:10:19. > :10:25.journalistic values are those. putting up to that Michael Gerson
:10:25. > :10:30.is being partisan. I think he is wrong. He would say he has a fair
:10:31. > :10:35.point to make. He is saying what you do makes elections devoid of
:10:35. > :10:40.elections by reducing them to a mathematical equation. We have gone
:10:40. > :10:43.through that. Do you worry that even if you if you are not being a
:10:43. > :10:48.vet the partisan that he might be used as a political tall? A thing
:10:48. > :10:54.the media coverage influences the way people can vote and behave. We
:10:54. > :10:58.are trying to use simple models that take poll's as direct measures
:10:58. > :11:03.of public opinion and take them back to the public domain. I do not
:11:03. > :11:09.like the business of politics, I do not live in Washington. The goal is
:11:09. > :11:15.to be to inform the public. Does it worry you that Barack Obama said at
:11:15. > :11:19.a dinner in March this year there are some one very special in my
:11:19. > :11:24.life who is missing who always has my back and stands with me no
:11:24. > :11:34.matter what the matter how dark things seem, my rock, my foundation,
:11:34. > :11:35.
:11:35. > :11:38.thank you Nate Silver. That was a joke. So he just said it as a joke.
:11:38. > :11:45.That is the number that is the dinner where he makes a number of
:11:46. > :11:55.jokes. His is on the record that you are a democrat. Do you support
:11:55. > :12:03.Barack Obama. I'm am on the centre- left in the US. The idea that
:12:03. > :12:07.people in politics should not have political views is ridiculous. I
:12:07. > :12:09.say that is my subject of a vantage-point, but I'm looking at
:12:09. > :12:15.an object of world we all share. Can I make accurate judgements
:12:15. > :12:18.about that world. By making verifiable predictions and claims
:12:18. > :12:23.that are not the biggest to be inscrutable, you can test on
:12:23. > :12:27.reality. People in the Republican Party for Mitt Romney, came close
:12:27. > :12:30.up to reality when they saw they were looking at the world and a
:12:30. > :12:35.jaded and biased way. You are an interesting phenomenon because you
:12:35. > :12:40.said I try not to talk to campaigns because they are mostly noise. You
:12:40. > :12:45.talk about politics being a game with a lot of and vested interests.
:12:45. > :12:50.ECGD not like to get into political debate and live in Washington. You
:12:50. > :12:57.cannot remain above the fray? think most journalists would not
:12:57. > :13:01.like to be the story. Part of the reason is that my block became
:13:01. > :13:07.symbolic of the polls. When you become invested with symbolic power
:13:07. > :13:12.it is not always your choice. It is a distraction. There are other
:13:12. > :13:19.sites that take a similar approach to what they do. They had largely
:13:19. > :13:22.similar results. All of them by election day, had Barack Obama
:13:22. > :13:26.ahead in the electoral college. When you have any type of signs or
:13:26. > :13:31.academic inquiry we have consensus view., different assumptions that
:13:31. > :13:37.you the same result, that is richer than when your model is based on
:13:37. > :13:42.one parameter. That might be changed. You can no longer remain
:13:43. > :13:47.above the political fray? I think I can. I do not really care about
:13:47. > :13:54.politics. There are things I worry about sports and economics. I have
:13:54. > :14:00.other ways to make a living. I have political views but as compared to
:14:00. > :14:04.people most people, I am a more detached from that world. The study
:14:04. > :14:08.politics at the University of Chicago, then you joined KPMG, you
:14:08. > :14:13.talk to online gambling and made $0.5 million from that. You said
:14:13. > :14:18.Poker gave you better training than anything I can think of about how
:14:18. > :14:24.to weigh new information and what may be less important information.
:14:24. > :14:34.The went into looking at baseball and looking at how players too. His
:14:34. > :14:50.
:14:50. > :14:56.politics another game like poker or You will get lucky sometimes as
:14:56. > :15:01.well. What is the best decision to make under an environment of
:15:01. > :15:08.uncertainty. That perspective is helpful. Knowing what we can and
:15:08. > :15:18.cannot control. Light politics where people take hyperbolic fuse.
:15:18. > :15:18.
:15:18. > :15:26.Manipulating public opinion. -- the views. You want $0.5 million. Why
:15:26. > :15:32.did you stop? That was at the peak. We lost some money after that.
:15:32. > :15:36.Poker was a bubble economy. In the meagre 2000, it was being on
:15:36. > :15:42.television. A lot of players who were not very good were depositing
:15:42. > :15:48.money. I took their money. Eventually the players got better
:15:48. > :15:53.off the bat once gave up all went broke. Anyway, you say the
:15:53. > :16:00.principles for piker, baseball, games and politics all were. Can
:16:00. > :16:06.your model predict any event? Could it have predicted the Arab spring
:16:06. > :16:11.for instance? We look at individual feels. Where there is some degree
:16:11. > :16:18.of predictability. Especially when the competition is not handling it
:16:18. > :16:23.in a very intelligent way. Sports, in the US, ten years ago baseball
:16:23. > :16:27.teams were not very sophisticated. Looking for cases like that.
:16:27. > :16:32.Predicting global and international events is something of a fool's
:16:32. > :16:42.errand. The best that democracies can do is prepare themselves
:16:42. > :16:42.
:16:43. > :16:47.overwriting of outcomes. Your success depends on... In the detail
:16:47. > :16:57.modelling Euan Dunn, worked on the US because there is so much data
:16:57. > :16:57.
:16:57. > :17:01.available. -- you haven't done. would be much more cautious about
:17:01. > :17:07.making predictions about because in Egypt. People may not be
:17:07. > :17:12.comfortable telling their honest opinion. In some countries, where
:17:12. > :17:17.the votes are counted fairly. what about the financial crisis for
:17:17. > :17:21.which there is a great deal of data and there was - could that have
:17:21. > :17:29.been predicted? There were a lot of people who understood the housing
:17:29. > :17:33.bubble well in advance. I should stay that the housing market was
:17:33. > :17:43.the relevant in the room. Seen the prices go up in the US and Western
:17:43. > :17:46.Europe, in the way that you always had a crash to follow. That was an
:17:46. > :17:52.obvious truth. One of the lessons of the book is that you can build
:17:52. > :17:56.are these very complicated and fancy models but if you lack of
:17:56. > :18:03.judgement it still lead you astray. You're talking about the book, the
:18:03. > :18:09.signal and the noise. Amaze all that noise and data, all that data
:18:09. > :18:15.we are overwhelmed with, looking at the financial crisis, do you thank
:18:16. > :18:21.you would be able to, however you do it, to say yes, the euro will
:18:21. > :18:25.survive or not it will crash? of the findings of the book is that
:18:25. > :18:30.the more sure of themselves the pound it is the less likely the
:18:30. > :18:35.outcome. I do not have a strong opinion on whether the eurozone
:18:35. > :18:40.will remain intact or not. I think it teaches us lessons
:18:40. > :18:43.retrospectively about maybe what happens with unknown unknowns. We
:18:44. > :18:50.take a big complex system that is working more less well and you
:18:50. > :18:53.change it, you can anticipate a problem like a common currency but
:18:53. > :18:59.the centralised control of public finances that will create
:18:59. > :19:04.difficulties. I do not think people anticipated how that would player.
:19:04. > :19:10.How funny you predict about how something is going to happen - the
:19:10. > :19:14.British elections in 2015 - the data is too premature? Politics and
:19:14. > :19:18.economics are closely tied together. Economists have been unable to
:19:18. > :19:23.predict recessions or recoveries more than six months in advance. To
:19:23. > :19:28.know the state of British economy in 2015 you would know more about
:19:28. > :19:31.how the politics would turn out all the elections were turnout. What
:19:31. > :19:36.about climate change signs which may spread dish -- predictions
:19:36. > :19:44.about what is going to happen in 70 years' time? Are you saying that is
:19:44. > :19:49.really based close? The reason why in the climate signed predictions
:19:50. > :19:54.but Test worthy is that they are based on theory which has been
:19:54. > :19:59.tested on the bases of relationships that have been
:19:59. > :20:04.understood for years. And you see a basic warming trend that correlates
:20:04. > :20:11.with carbon dioxide emissions. Climate change science can forecast
:20:11. > :20:18.what is going to happen to the earth in decades to come? If you
:20:18. > :20:22.Trapmore Hague in the atmosphere -- if you trap more heat in the
:20:22. > :20:26.atmosphere then you can predict something. But I cannot predict
:20:27. > :20:33.what is going to happen in Ireland in the summer of Myatt they know
:20:33. > :20:35.2058. The basic notion that the plan and is getting warmer and when
:20:35. > :20:42.things get that the economic consequences is on solid ground.
:20:42. > :20:47.There are those people, like the professor of statistics in
:20:47. > :20:53.Pennsylvania, says that there is a lot we need to know about the
:20:53. > :20:57.climate. These are her simplified representations of complex systems.
:20:57. > :21:04.These are just approximations. course, I agree with that entirely
:21:05. > :21:09.but the question is what evidence heavily absorbed so far? Could you
:21:09. > :21:19.discount that there is a big freeze that might happen a new Ice Age?
:21:19. > :21:19.
:21:20. > :21:24.think it is unlikely. But possible? Do you want to face a bet? I do not
:21:24. > :21:28.know if we're going to be around. I want to ask about the nature of
:21:28. > :21:33.predictions. The odds of a big freeze are hundreds to one against.
:21:33. > :21:38.When it comes to you, or something like climate change science based
:21:38. > :21:43.on predictions and forecast, and you accept what the professor has
:21:43. > :21:46.said, does one go to policy makers and politicians and public and say,
:21:46. > :21:52.we will base their policies on these predictions and commit
:21:52. > :21:56.billions and billions of dollars... A lot of policy positions have been
:21:56. > :22:04.based on predictions that were on a much less solid ground and then
:22:04. > :22:10.that, for example the invasion of Iraq. If, the decision to enter the
:22:10. > :22:13.and have a common currency. And there much more systematic
:22:13. > :22:21.uncertainties than in climate change. We have to make decisions
:22:21. > :22:25.all the time. With the information available. A statistician from the
:22:25. > :22:28.Copenhagen looked at climate change and accepts that it is happening
:22:28. > :22:33.undeniably but says the narrow focus of reducing carbon emissions
:22:33. > :22:38.that some governments have could leave future generations with major
:22:38. > :22:42.costs without major cards to temperatures. Does he have a point
:22:42. > :22:47.of as my this is not about the signs are predictions. This is
:22:47. > :22:53.about what we do as or alleviation technique. If we have that debate
:22:53. > :22:59.over here in Europe, in the US you have people still engaged in a
:22:59. > :23:04.scientific debate. If you read the chapter in my book, I'm not someone
:23:04. > :23:11.who says everything is always right on the climate science and be back.
:23:11. > :23:15.It is still at a premature debate in the US. You say in your book,
:23:15. > :23:20.you hope we might get more insight into planning our futures and
:23:20. > :23:26.become less likely to repeat our mistakes. That is right.Therefore,
:23:26. > :23:31.there is a purpose to predictions and forecasting. That is the whole
:23:31. > :23:35.point stop on his swing, in my view, forecasting is not the most
:23:35. > :23:38.critical thing in the world. But some of those same lessons you can
:23:39. > :23:42.learn from those fields are instructive when it comes to
:23:42. > :23:45.economic planning or obviously winning comes to anticipating where
:23:45. > :23:54.the climate might go and what we can do to change that and mitigate
:23:54. > :24:00.the effects. Wycombe and a lot from games, sports and politics. -- we