Brexit 101

xplorer · May 18th, 2016, 07:18 AM

Tymbeline

Not sure that this is really an answer to your question at all, but there seems to me to be a growing consensus among the political commentators/journalists/analysts/academics that (for reasons I don't understand) the most ardently pro-EU voters are "the hardest for the pollsters to reach and include" and that the polls may, therefore, generally underestimate the size of the "remain" vote.

Thanks Tymbeline - I still would expect in this case that polls report fairly similar results. Wouldn't you?

aaronjames · May 18th, 2016, 07:24 AM

Id say the polls are a load of crap and the establishment are papping themselves, nearly everyone i speak to wants out. I think the common man definitely wants exit but Im not sure the common man will get what he wants look what they did to Ireland.

jtrade · May 18th, 2016, 08:09 AM

Polling is a very inexact science... look at the last election.

GBPUSD certainly jumped when this came out this morning : Latest IPOS Mori Brexit poll sees Remain leading with 55%

I hope they're wrong, but I fear that fear will rule the (voting) day & we'll stay in

xplorer · May 18th, 2016, 08:13 AM

jtrade

Polling is a very inexact science... look at the last election.

Very inexact or made it to look like it's very inexact?

ratfink · May 18th, 2016, 02:41 PM

xplorer

Just in the last couple of days, I've seen the following polls in my news feed about leave/remain opinions

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Considering that polls

should be impartial
should be balanced
should reflect what people think

If the above is true, then polls should differ only very slightly from each other, unlike what I am seeing.

Do you have any views to explain the significant differences?

Usually small sample sizes.

xplorer · May 18th, 2016, 04:31 PM

ratfink

Usually small sample sizes.

Thanks ratfink - but the pollsters should be professionals, no? Any person with a shred of statistical knowledge knows you need a sufficient sample size to be balanced.

ratfink · May 18th, 2016, 04:40 PM

xplorer

Thanks ratfink - but the pollsters should be professionals, no? Any person with a shred of statistical knowledge knows you need a sufficient sample size to be balanced.

Agreed, but I only treat them as interesting if they're quoted with an error factor. I think this vote is turning out to be a demographic sampling nightmare for most of them, hence my best guess at the source of the discrepancies.

Blash · May 19th, 2016, 11:16 PM

jtrade

Polling is a very inexact science... look at the last election.

GBPUSD certainly jumped when this came out this morning : Latest IPOS Mori Brexit poll sees Remain leading with 55%

I hope they're wrong, but I fear that fear will rule the (voting) day & we'll stay in

Reading this great book by Nate Silver, just bought it. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't, by Nate Silver, New York Times Bestseller

Most people predict very poorly, have very little skill at doing so and don't understand this field (prediction) well at all so most do a extremely poor job at it.

I just started the book and am excited about it. IMHO what better to learn more about since we are in the business, literally, of predicting.

This about the book from Amazon....

Quoting

Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

Ron