November 2008

Who would've known that counting could be so complicated?  Nate Silver, the geek superstar of this election season is predicting how this race will go down.  Take a look at the formula he uses in his site FiveThirtyEight.com, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around some of the ideas he's throwing out there but I think it goes something like this:  The challenged votes are really complicating things for Al Franken.

Using regression analysis, Silver predicts a Franken victory.

This regression is a bit difficult to interpret, particularly with the presence of all the interaction terms, but the key intuition is as follows. Suppose that the number of challenges is zero -- as will happen once the state canvassing board finishes considering all such challenges in December. In this case, all terms in the regression equation reduce to zero, except for the constant term and t, which is Franken's share of the two-way vote in that precinct. Read more

Minnesota, while you may still be waiting to end the 2008 elections, you have an opportunity to make your voices heard about the current presidential administration by visiting Goodbye.us. Goodbye.us is a web based project to gather (and present) as many open letters to our outgoing president as possible before inauguration day. Our goal is fairly simple: to capture the feelings Americans have towards one of the most notable and controversial administrations in American history. Think of it as a time capsule for the Bush Administration. So if you have something to say to Mr. Bush, please do not hesitate to visit Goodbye.us !