Mea Culpa

I stayed in yesterday which means I have to fall back on my ideas bin. There is only one thing in the phone version and it’s difficult to write, it’s a Mea Culpa. I’ll bite the bullet and write about being wrong. But first of course, the minutiae of my life.

I’ve been writing about the miraculous effects of being able to breathe though my nose when I sleep. The tan Breathe Right strips did the trick. Last night my congestion was extra bad, it still is, and it was not up to the job. I might have to bite the bullet and pay full price to buy the large strips. When I can’t breathe through my nose I keep waking up during the night, my mouth feels like the bottom of a bird cage, and even when I think I’m sleeping I have sleep apnea so it isn’t restful. People spend a lot of time worrying about their diet but not getting enough sleep even though the effects of sleep and diet on overall health are comparable and sleep is much better understood. I’m wondering if an otolaryngologist can help and not just because they often called ENTS for Ear, Nose, Throat. Breathing through my nose would help with more than my sleep. I’m not sure if anything can be done.

Now for my Mea Culpa, and to my mind it’s a serious one. In the run-up to the last election I followed the FiveThirtyEight and Upshot analyses closely. I read the updates every day. I knew very well that the election wasn’t a sure thing for Hillary. Based on their track record I trusted FiveThirtyEight more than the Upshot and it was more pessimistic, giving Trump a 30% chance of winning. The Upshot was a little over 20%. But even the upshot prediction was far from a guarantee. I love the way they put it. It’s the same odds as missing a 40-yard field goal (the yardage is approximate). Any football fan has seen games lost on a missed field goal that was easily makeable.

Many of my friends were not overconfident, they were dreading Trump winning. That is what led to my sin; I guaranteed that Trump would lose. I knew that wasn’t true but the 70% he did I would have saved my friends all that needless angst. Of course it didn’t work out that way. I told an untruth, I told a lie. It was for virtuous reasons but that’s not an excuse. I was probably swayed because I did what I always tell others to not do, I said what would make me feel better. This let those that went with their dread feel justified. “I knew he’d win.” They didn’t. They made a wrong bet and by a somewhat convoluted path won. Nobody said, “He’ll lose the popular vote but will win the electoral college by winning a few key states by a hair. That’s what happened. The electoral college was the only reason he had a chance. The polls did quite well in predicting the vote. It’s just that the errors were all in one way and concentrated in a few states. The reason FiveThirtyEight had it more accurate than the Upshot is that they include the errors in different states being correlated.

I have learned my lesson. I broke a cardinal rule, I gave a hard prediction without error bars. All such predictions are worthless. All you can honestly give is a range of possibilities and anything saying otherwise is trying to sell you something. That is exactly what I was trying to do, sell people on not worrying about the election. I sinned against truth. I’ve now confessed. My penance has been going on since the election. I will not ask for absolution. I will just try to go forth and sin no more. I will most likely fail. I’ll do my best not to.