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Does Redskins Loss Presage A Kerry Win?
Puny Human Nick writes "As mentioned before, the last home game the Redskins play before the election has predicted who will win since 1944. Well, the Redskins v. Green Bay game ended a few hours ago and it looks as though Kerry is going to win on Tuesday."
As someone who watched the game it means that Bush will win the election and then it'll be overturned in favor of Kerry by the judges. That would be the exact parallel with the game.
You would think that people with sport superstitions would have had some sense knocked into them after the World Series...
... not that I would mind Kerry winning.
Yeah, but Tues/Wednesday of what week? Surely you don't think the election will actually end on the day it's supposed to...
Loves science, hates superstition... unless it agrees with their world viewpoint...
Of course, I'm continually let down. What in the heck kind of superstition makes this worthy of being posted to Slashdot in the first place? Are we trying to ignite flamewars? Are there too many mod points being used in technically sound articles and we need to draw some away? Seriously.
If not now, when?
But not because it predicts anything. Interresting because it allows us to discuss critical thinking. This is a perfect example of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" - a VERY common logical fallicy, also known as a "coincidental correlation".
Basically the problem is people frequently see something happen and ASSUME that something they noticed, or known about the prior situation MUST be the cause. - It gets better with increasing numbers (if the reskins game had only predicted the winner once its cute, but after 15 elections it has got to be right!)
Now the reason this is such a good exercise to use for this important critical thinking skill is because most reasonable people would already know that the redskins game predicting an election is absurd.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Say we're talking about 15 elections. To be able to predict them accurately is a 1 in 2^15 chance or 1 in 32768. All you need to have is 32 thousand things going on and you're all but assured that one of them will be a perfect predictor.
It reminds me of a stock scam from a few years back. You mail out aprediction on some random stock to 10,000 people. Half you say it will rise, half you say it will fall. Repeat until you've been right 10 times in a row. Now contact the 10 people you were right for, and offer to sell them your method for $LOTS. How many people would turn down someone who was right ten times in a row.
Of course, like every other non-american, I'm desperately hoping Bush loses
The real reason Kerry will win is because the polls are very wrong. Just as generals always "plan to win the last war" the polls are showing methods designed to win the last election.
When they poll "likely voters" they ignore, among other considerations, people who have cellphones. AFAIK, they only poll over land lines.
Also, there's huge assumptions in the statistical breakdown of voting age. Young voters often don't care about the election and have the lowest turnout. However, many people are so worked up over this election and the results of the last one that I believe we'll see the highest percentage of young voters in a long time. Most younger voters lean more towards the left.
Thus the polls are skewed because their assumptions are totally wrong. Given that it's a dead heat in most polls right now, Kerry should come out ahead.
Unless there's some kind of cheating/manipulation of the election, but what are the odds of that?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Sigh...drawing causation or correlation from 5 data points is just sad. Kerry supporters are grasping at straws.
...sure helps to demystify curses with logic, but most people don't bother.
I think the sad thing is how seriously the Bush camp is taking this. While most everyone else is taking this as a "Ha ha! What a neat coincidence", repeating it tongue in cheek, the rabid frothy spittled Bush supporters have actually come out defensively regarding this (see your post, and many before it). Amazing.
There's been 17 elections since this 'pattern' supposedly emereged. At most, that means 9 times an incumbent was running. At most, that means 5 times the incumber lost when the Redskins did.
Huh? Firstly it's not a curse, it's a humorous coincidence. Ha ha. Secondly, RTFA - They're talking about the incumbent PARTY. Thirdly, your convoluted attempt at bringing "logic" to the table looks like it misfired - your logic is nonsensical.
It _is_ a pretty unlikely coincience....but unlikely coincidences happen all of the time.
Yes, they're both rich white men. But aside from that there are a host of rather large differences.
For one thing, the Bush Doctrine is a serious departure from previous American foreign policy. Kerry has advocated an approach that relies on the sort of coalition-building that Bush Sr. used with such effectiveness in the first Gulf War.
Kerry believes that excessive tax cuts for those who make over $200k per year is counterproductive. Bush believes that tax cuts of any kind, particularly those that favor the wealthy, result in increased entrepreneurial activity, which pumps up the economy, resulting in more jobs for everyone. These differences definitely have an effect on economic policy.
On the environment, the candidates aren't even close. Kerry has a long history of working for the environment, and Bush doesn't even know what the word "environment" means.
Bush has to cater to his "Base" by nixing stem cell research. Kerry knows that science is not something to be feared.
The differences go on and on and on...
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think you're reading WAY too much in this. Get out and vote, rather than saying who's going to win based on a football game...
Holy shit .. by the looks of these replies, you'd think you folks were on his Doctoral comittee and he just submitted this as his Disertation thesis ... ... sweet jesus, it's just a funny coincidence ...
...
... hey, there is no Santa Claus either so I don't want to hear about that weird deer you saw running around on your roof on christmas eve last year, either ...
It's an 'interesting' statistic -- an urban myth. You people are busting out with Chebyshev's law this, and according to Modus Ponens that
hey, news flash, you're not going to find the meaning of life encoded in the articles of slashdot
Wow
Policies aside, at least with Kerry the rest of the world won't be snickering so much.
I mean, ~290 million people to choose from* and George Bush was viewed as the USA's best choice for President? That really is funny on a very fundamental level.
* Yes, I'm aware that the entirety of the US population isn't eligable to be president, but anyway....
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
We can see sequences and coincidence in anything. Give me a large enough stat base and I can probably work out the odds of Kerry winning based on the nth decimal place in pi.
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Every time kids/teenagers have been polled en masse about the presidency, the president they chose won. Strangely enough, Bush came out on top by about 10% in ChannelOne's massive poll of teenagers. Does this mean Bush will win? No, it means superstitions are bullshit.
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Last time the Red Sox won, the incumbent lost. How's that for a pattern?
http://www.snopes.com/politics/humor/redsox.asp
The apathy of the electorate, in *not* demanding better candidates from the major parties, has gotten us into a mess. The parties have no interest in *really* fixing things, because a fixed government is one that doesn't need to give handouts. But the handouts are what buys the votes of the uneducated/ignorant/lazy.
but unlikely coincidences happen all of the time.
One in a billion events happen to six people on earth every day...
Most of them are probably dull and go unnoticed.
To believe otherwise is metaphysics.
I hope this helps.
--- Ban humanity.
May I ask what money you are referring to?
* Do you earn more than $200,000 a year, if you do: welcome back to 1999. Big deal. You just helped our country. If you earn less than that, you keep your tax break.
* Are you referring to premiums for non-privatized health insurance? That's why Kerry supports a cap on insurance payout: $30,000.01 and up is covered by government. This effectively reduces how much you pay for your insurance premium each year. Privatizing health insurance leads to misinformed citizens and patchy plans - backed by companies that could go under any second in the resulting big business competition.
* Are you referring to the war in Iraq which has cost over $120,000,000,000? Are you not concerned that nearly half of your taxes go to the military and fund this war? That's what is being deducted from your paycheck. Vote with your wallet.
As a slashdotter, I think we have the responsibility to actually listen to "Mosh" and act responsibly. The republicans can sink to their own filthy level of voter fraud and intimidation by themselves. There are two ways to stop them:
1) Get out the vote, and overwhelm any cheating the bad guys can do. That kind of cheating works great if the candidates are tied (which every wishful poll in the country would have you believe). The more people get out to vote for Kerry, the less chance cheating can throw the election. So don't go to those polls alone: bring your friends, family, and anyone else you can (without forcing, kidnapping, or bribing them, of course). Give Kerry a landslide from the people those polls don't count.
2) Join the efforts by various rights groups to help monitor and protect voting polls and voters.
Personally, I think Eminem delivered the true October surprise. He's right too, the coming of the King of Terror began in a schoolroom, it's reign should end there too, with the only real swing state that matters: the youth of America.
There is hope Kerry can win, and not only from sports omens. Leading Hindu astrologers and a noted Hindu mystic believe that Kerry is going to win, Bush will never again be president, and Kerry will end terrorism and bring world peace! The sun and the moon have even endorsed Kerry.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves."
Belebera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Bush's regime would have you believe terrorists just came to be 3 years ago. They don't want you to think about the fact that there have been terrorist attacks before and we didn't need things like the Patriot act to make ourselves feel safe....
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
The fact that the next leader of the freaking world can be predicted by a game...
So, anyone want to take a guess as to why the rest of the world thinks Americans are arrogant pricks?
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
All of these polls (and especially the superstitions) are a crock of shit.
Well, MOST people who follow the situation in Iraq closely believe that the Bush administration is incompetent. Where do we begin? Letting looters run wild? Not securing the arms depots (not just the high explosives, all kinds of stuff was left unguarded- hell they stood by and watched as insurgents carried weapons off)? Disbanding the army? Going into Fallujah? "Flip-flopping" and getting out of Fallujah when it got a little too messy? Total cockup start to finish.
Afghanistan has been done better but there is still more of the country under the control of the Taliban and warlords than Karzai. Half-assed, but not a total cockup.
Bush on the economy has been something of a failure. Sure, we're coming out a recession, and I'm sure the tax cuts helped that- they could hardly hurt. But instead of directing the money where it would do the most good (the middle class) it went to where it did much less good (the wealthiest people in America) and created a massive budget deficit that will take years to pay off. This didn't help the economy so much as it helped the rich. The recovery has been far from amazing.
Socially? Most people feel he did a good job post 9-11. But it's amazing to see how much that has been messed up. He said he'd be a uniter, and he hasn't been- he's divided this nation. America is now more divided than it has been since the Viet Nam War. For some people he's been a good leader. If you're rich, right wing, and/or Christian he's great. But he seems to think that everyone else can go fuck themselves.
Finally, how about those American values like freedom and our rights that he is supposed to be protecting? Under the Bush administration we have seen people locked up without trial for years at a time. Four years ago if you said that America would do that I'd never have believed it. Sure, governments do that. But just the bad guys- the USSR, China, Nazi Germany- right? Those kinds of governments lock up people without trial. Not the good old freedom-loving USA.
I could go on forever. As for mandates, let's not get started on that. Bush lost the popular vote, so he has no mandate.
Hi, I'm not American, but living as I do in Australia, I might as well be one since the US elections are going to be deciding who runs the land of oz for the next 4 years. And I don't know what scares me more - the idea that Americans think their election outcome might be decided on a sports game or the fact that they do have a hegemony in international relations. Or maybe it's the voting system of the supposed paragon of democracy....
the country hasn't melted
But it's about as close as possible.
Budget: fail
Foreign Policy: fail
Education: fail
Healthcare: fail
Jobs: fail
What else? Oh yeah, we were attacked, and we started a war that we are losing with people totally unrelated to our attackers.
What else can go wrong?
I know more than you drink.
I find it highly amusing, but at the same time disturbing, that the Americans since 9/11 have been shouting for terrorists heads on a plate while for many years before 9/11, and quite likely after 9/11 as well, collections has been and are being made in support of the IRA.
Do tell me that you actually realise the double morale in that...
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
Well, truth be told, it has been done elsewhere. Putin in Russia seems unlikely to give up power, though he is not in danger of losing any elections. The opposition parties are finding it curiously hard to gain any ground against him. It helps to have all the TV stations on your side. He has a vast majority in their congress and he can legislate more terms for himself as he sees fit.
But we're not Russia. Truth be told, I really think it's just not worth it in a truely robust, though obviously imperfect, democracy like ours. Even if the election goes horribly for the Republicans they'll still hold nearly half the congress and in just four short years they'll get another shot at the White House.
What you are talking about isn't an impossible scenario, given extremly dire circumstances, but it's very difficult to imagine it now. We did have a civil war once upon a time, but we were a different country then, and people's allegences were much more local. I think that anything like that happening now would never work because people, despite their differnces, would rightly see it as an attack on democracy on a very fundamental level. In other places in the world were democracy is a relatively new thing this might not be as huge of a concern. Many peoples have known only periods of disorder and periods of tyrany. Look at Russia or Iraq, many people there still believe that however scary it may seem, one all powerful man may be the only force that can actually keep order. Saddam was a brutal tyrant, but he kept the many fractured, tribal elements in his country from endless bloodshed.
America, fortunately has no such history. We have seen democracy work. We have a peaceful country and we are not concerned about internal strife like this. The Republicans, or the Democrats for that matter, have lost many presidential elections but have always been able to get power back down the road. Our political warfare has so far served both sides relatively well. If Bush loses, a war will certainly begin to restore power, but it will, thankfully, be a peaceful one.
You do realize that it is sort of suspicious when Bush's brother is in charge of the disputed state?
And you do realize it's more than a little suspicious to have Bush's Florida campaign manager play a major role in the recount?
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Everyone repeat after me... Correlation does not prove causality... correlation does not prove causality.
Looks as if you are swallowing the Democrat party line of class hatred and not looking at the actual process and results of taxation and the history of how Congress votes.
I know you're probably trolling, but lots of people really believe (and spread) this kind of BS, so I'll pretend you really think what you say.
In short, you get economy 101 but apparently you didn't make it to 102.
Sweden (yes, 50%+ income tax Sweden) has a massively positive trade balance with the USA. When I say massively positive I mean they sell you almost three times as much as they buy from you ! And no, it's not biscuits or linux distros. It's high tech industry-oriented goods. Except for Ikea, Ericsson and Volvo, most Swedish exports are from small specialised companies that employ ridiculously educated workers to desing and produce high value-added goods.
France and Germany are a mess, but that's not because of taxes or social security. It's just that they dug themselves into a bureaucratic hole. Saying that a strong state with highly developed social services entails sprawling, Franco-German like bureaucracies is a lie ! Hell, you Americans share a border thousands of miles long with Canada, don't you ever look at what's going on up north ?
Your whole argument about labor costs and massive offshoring is dumb. The same BS that politicians serve us daily. Read any book by Paul Krugman as an introduction (looks like you'll need it), then hit a real economy manual. In short, wages in any given national industry tend to equal the average productivity of this industry in this country. Do you really think that wages in India and China have not risen in the last decade ? See South Korea or Taiwan for other recent examples.
Do the research and really think before you vote.
Yup, good idea.
Thomas-
Also: Norway and pretty much anything nautical.
From a purely economic standpoint, anyone who works for a living and votes republican is an idiot. They've been duped into voting "what's good for the country" instead voting based on their own situation.
For 2003 a single man making 28,400 dollars, and living in WA state (8% sales tax) he will pay 27% of his wages in tax. This assumes that 50% of what he makes will be spent on taxable goods, and that he takes the standard deduction. It should be noted that this same table gives the U.S. tax rate at 35% because it only displays the highest rate for countries with a variable tax.
According to www.worldwide-tax.com, if the same man lived in Germany he would pay 25% of his wages in tax. In Norway, 28%, in the UK, 30%.
The way I see it, the big difference here is not how much we pay vs. European countries, but what we get for those taxes vs. what people in European countries get for thos taxes. Free medical, free University level education, real Social Security. We get give two billion dollars to Halliburton.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
you do not get rich by spending money foolishly. and you spend it very foolishly.
I don't want to get rich, and I don't want to seem rich. I want to live well. You seem to think the wealth is what matters. It doesn't, and there's little point in accumulating huge amounts of money if you don't spend it on things you enjoy. Believe me, I spend my money very wisely.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I for one, hope that we can modernize the whole election system. We are worse than a 3rd world country. Which other developed country has as much problems with their elections as we do? Not a single one! You never see a court deciding the outcome of an election in any other 1st world country. Voter frauds? Unknown.
We also need to get rid of a system that only gives your vote importance if you live in certain states. I live in Florida and you all know the issues we have had and how important it is to vote here. If I had lived in Nebraska or South Dakota I could just as well have stayed at home and not voted since the outcome of those states are already set. Our election system is a leftover from the days of no communication and a different world. We are the most backwards country in the world when it comes to electing a leader, it's a disgrace to this country!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!