Did the polls in 2016 GET IT WRONG?

I am interested in cases where almost everyone seems to believe something that is actually NOT true.

An interesting example from the 2016 election is that most people seem to believe that: THE POLLS WERE WRONG! I have heard Trump supporters say this and I have heard Trump opponents say this. It is accepted by so many people on both sides of the political divide that it might seem crazy to even challenge it now.

But maybe these are the beliefs - the ones most widely and unquestioningly accepted - that we most need to challenge.

So is this belief true? Were the polls really wrong in 2016?

Let's consider what the polls were saying just before the election. Here is an article that came out the day before the election that discusses the latest poll results. It is called “Presidential Election Polls for November 7, 2016” and appeared in Newsweek.

According to this article “Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton leads her Republican rival Donald Trump by 2.5 points, according to the Real Clear Politics average of most state and national polls. Clinton has 46.8 percent of voter support compared to Trump's 44.3 percent.”

The article also says that “Forecasts still show Clinton winning the election. “FiveThirtyEight” shows Clinton with a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election, while Trump has a 34.5 percent chance of victory.”

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[So why did Hillary lose in 2016? Read this new book to find out.]

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There is additional information in this article but I will focus on the two extracts above to evaluate the claim that “the polls were wrong.”

Before we look at the results of the election I would like to consider four points about the information above: what polls do, what “chance” means, the danger of lazy language, and what did these polls actually measure?

1. What do polls really do?

First, what do polls really do? Well, for one thing, polls do NOT predict the future. Polls tell you what answers people gave at a certain point in time. When you take polls at different points in time you get different results. If people who say “the polls were wrong in 2016” mean that the polls predicted Hillary would win but then Hillary lost, then that just means these people don't understand what polls do.

According to the article we quote from above Hillary had 46.8 percent of voter support at the time the polls reported on were taken. That does not PREDICT she will get 46.8 percent of the vote at some later date. If the election were still several weeks away many things might change, and many voters might change their minds, between the poll and the election. On the other hand, it is probably logical to assume that, if nothing significant has changed between the polls and the election, then Hillary will probably get about as much support as she had in the poll. But this is an ASSUMPTION based partly on the poll and partly on the belief that nothing has changed since the poll. The poll ITSELF does not predict anything about the future.

2. What does "chance" mean?

Second, what does “chance” mean? The article we are studying here says that Hillary has a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election. This does not mean that Hillary will win! It means exactly what it says, Hillary has a 65.5 percent chance of winning.

Let's illustrate this with an example. Suppose I give you two coins and a cup. I tell you to shake up the coins in the cup and then toss them out onto a table. I tell you “there is a 75 percent chance that there will be at least one head showing when you toss these coins onto the table.” You toss the coins and we see there is no head showing. If you then say, “Ha ha. Your prediction was wrong” you would be mistaken. I did not predict there would be a head showing, I just said there was a 75 percent chance that there would be a head showing and that statement is absolutely true even if, on any particular toss, no head is showing.

This is the same thing that happened to forecasters in the 2016 election. The polls themselves did not predict anything. The forecasts, based partly on polls and partly on other information, did not predict anything either. They did try to calculate the “chance” or “probability” that Hillary would win, and the fact that Hillary lost does not prove those calculations were wrong any more than getting no head when tossing two coins proves that there is NOT a 75 percent chance of seeing at least one head.

[Note: One big difference between tossing coins and having elections is that we can toss the coins many times to see if the calculated 75 percent chance of seeing at least one head really works out over many tries, while we cannot repeat an election many times to see if the calculated probability was correct. Still, the principle is the same. If the probability of something happening, like Hillary winning, is calculated as 65.5 percent, the mere fact that she did not win does not prove that the calculated probability was incorrect.]

3. The danger of lazy language

Third, the danger of lazy language. One of the statements from the article we quoted above is “Forecasts still show Clinton winning the election.” This certainly looks like a prediction that Hillary will win. Notice first, that this statement is not saying that polls show Clinton winning, but rather that forecasts show Clinton winning. But is even that LITERALLY true?

The statement above is immediately followed by another statement that explains what the author means. “FiveThirtyEight shows Clinton with a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election, while Trump has a 34.5 percent chance of victory.” In other words, saying that forecasts show Clinton winning just means that forecasters have calculated that Clinton has a higher probability of winning. As we showed above, even if Hillary loses, which she did, that does not prove that the calculation of her probability of winning was incorrect.

The problem here is just that people sometimes save time by using lazy language. Instead of saying the more accurate “Forecasts calculate that Hillary has a 65.5 percent chance of winning the election” sometimes people take a shortcut and say the less accurate “Forecasts show Hillary winning the election.” We have to be on the lookout for this kind of lazy language and it should usually be fairly obvious from the context of what we are reading.

4. What did the 2016 polls actually measure?

Fourth, what does the poll actually measure? The poll results quoted above, from just before the election, are talking about popular vote and not Electoral vote. It is natural to assume that whoever wins the popular vote will also win the Electoral vote because that is what usually happens. But it does not ALWAYS happen and 2016 was one of those unusual years when the winner of the popular vote did not also win the Electoral vote.

So here again, the fact that Hillary lost the Electoral vote on election day does not mean that a poll measuring popular vote a few days before the election, was wrong.

With all of these technical preliminaries out of the way we are finally ready to look at what actually happened in the election. According to the American Presidency Project Hillary ended up with 48.2 percent of the vote and Trump got 46.1 percent of the vote. What did the last polls say just before the election? According to the article we are discussing the average of poll results was 46.8 percent for Hillary and 44.3 percent for Trump.

This is pretty close agreement between the polls and the election, isn't it?

• The polls showed Hillary at 46.8 percent and she actually got 48.2 percent. A difference of just 3%.
• The polls showed Trump at 44.3 percent and he actually got 46.1%. A difference of just 4%.
• The polls showed Hillary ahead by 2.5 percentage points and at the time of the election she led by 2.1 percentage points.

Anyone who says the polls in 2016 “got it wrong” should take a close look at these numbers. The polls got it right! What caused the surprise was an incorrect assumption that whoever wins the popular vote will also win the Electoral vote.

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[So why did Hillary lose in 2016? Read this new book to find out what her explanation is.]

[If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

***

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

Achieving Excellence with Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing teaches us how to accomplish more with less. It focuses on serving customers with single-minded devotion because it is the customers who pay us. Lean continually reminds us that any activity that does not serve the customer is waste and we should do our best to eliminate it.

The creater of Lean Manufacturing was Toyota, which calls it The Toyota Production System. Lean ideas are often counter-intuitive and people find some of them hard to understand or accept. Some organizations trying to implement Lean do not achieve the success they were hoping for because they did not really have a deep understanding of what they were doing or why they were doing it.

This great article "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System" from 1999 aims to tell us about some of the deep principles of Lean, the "unspoken rules," the key elements that can make the difference between success and failure in business.

The authors discuss four of the fundamental requirements of a Lean Manufacturing system:

1. All work is highly specified in its content, sequence, timing, and outcome
2. Each worker knows who provides what to him, and when
3. Every product and service flows along a simple, specified path
4. Any improvement to processes, worker/machine connections, or flow paths must be made through the scientific method, under a teacher's guidance, and at the lowest possible organizational level.

The underlying theme of all of these rules, and of the whole article, is the importance of combining rigidity and flexibility in an organization.

Why would we want to combine rigidity and flexibility? And how would we do that?

First, to get consistent performance we need work procedures precisely defined so they are done exactly the same way every time. Think of a checklist followed by a pilot before taking off. This is the rigidity part of the system. Why do we have to be so rigid? If different people do the same job in different ways at different times we will never know for sure what works and what doesn't work! If, on the other hand, we require everyone doing a job to follow exactly the same procedure every time then, if there is something wrong with that procedure, we are going to find out FAST.

Second, to drive continuous improvement, when we discover a situation where a procedure does not work then we need the flexibility part of the system to kick in. We need front-line workers to be trained in problem-solving techniques so they can handle issues quickly and effectively under the guidance of their immediate supervisors. Think of a race car coming into pit row for an emergency repair. Solving a problem with a procedure leads to a new procedure which everyone is required to follow so we can find out if this one works better.

By combining the rigidity of requiring adherence to precisely defined procedures with the flexibility of fast problem solving right on the manufacturing floor we get the advantages of consistent performance of best known practices while simultaneously driving continuous improvements.

That sounds like a great recipe for making a company more successful!

There are other powerful ideas in this article which is worth careful study by anyone interested in improving organizational performance.

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[Great book about using Lean to achieve world-class results in your organization.]

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***

Copyright © 2018 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

The Amazing Monty Hall Paradox

The Monty Hall Problem

Let's take a look at one of the most counter-intuitive problems in the world and see what we can learn from it:

Imagine you are on one of those TV game shows where you have to choose one of three curtains. Behind one curtain is a wonderful prize, behind the other two curtains – nothing. You choose a curtain and then the host opens one of the curtains you did not choose to show you there is no prize behind it. Then he says you can keep the curtain you originally chose or switch to the other curtain that is still closed.

What is your best strategy for winning the prize?:

1. Keep your first choice?
2. Switch to the other closed curtain?
3. Or does it make no difference either way?

This is a famous problem that Marilyn Vos Savant wrote about in her column in Parade Magazine back in 1990. That's when I first read about it.

Marilyn was known for years as the person with the highest IQ in the world but when she gave her answer to this problem thousands of people wrote to her to say she was wrong. Mathematicians with Ph.D's wrote to her to say she was wrong. Even one of the most famous mathematicians in the world thought she was wrong.

But she wasn't wrong....

She was right....

She said the answer was B and that is demonstrably true. What makes this problem so interesting is that so many smart people think the answer is C and then can't even understand WHY the right answer is B even after B is proven to BE the right answer.

This is a wonderful problem that can teach us something about how we think, how our thinking sometimes goes wrong, and maybe even something about the deep nature of reality itself.

But first, how can we show that the answer really is B?

First Explanation

Think about it like this:

When you first chose a curtain you had a 1/3 chance of winning and a 2/3 chance of losing.

If the host then opens one of the losing curtains and asks you if you want to switch your choice we know this:

• if you originally chose the winning curtain then switching will make you lose,
• but if you originally chose a losing curtain then switching will make you win.

Since you originally had a 1/3 chance of picking the winning curtain then switching gives you a 1/3 chance of losing.

Since you originally had a 2/3 chance of picking a losing curtain then switching gives you a 2/3 chance of winning.

You are twice as likely to win this game if you switch curtains!

Second Explanation

Let's try analyzing the Monty Hall problem another way: by simply considering every option and counting up how many ways there are to win and how many ways there are to lose.

We'll look at every option when the prize is behind curtain #1. (If you were to repeat this analysis assuming the prize is behind curtain #2 or curtain #3 the results would be the same.)

OK... the prize is behind curtain #1 but, of course, you don't know that when you are playing the game.

• If you pick curtain #1 and do not switch then you win.
• If you pick curtain #2 and do not switch then you lose.
• If you pick curtain #3 and do not switch then you lose.

By following the "do not switch" strategy there is ONE way to win and TWO ways to lose. Therefore, if you make your original choice of curtain at random and then refuse to switch you have a 1/3 chance of getting the prize and a 2/3 chance of not getting the prize.

Now let's see what happens if we follow the switching strategy....

• If you pick curtain #1 the host will show you what's behind either curtain #2 or curtain #3, then you will switch to the remaining closed curtain and lose.
• If you pick curtain #2 the host will show you what's behind curtain #3, then you will switch to curtain #1 and win.
• If you pick curtain #3 the host will show you what's behind curtain #2, then you will switch to curtain #1 and win.

By following the switching strategy there are TWO ways to win and ONE way to lose. If you make your original choice of curtain at random, and then switch, you have a 2/3 chance of winning and only a 1/3 chance of losing.

This is one of the most counter-intuitive problems EVER CONCEIVED but I hope this little thought experiment will persuade you that the counter-intuitive result really is true!

Third Explanation

The amazing thing about this seeming paradox is that the CHOICE you make at the beginning affects what happens to the probabilities later. Let's consider an alternative form of the problem with 100 curtains and see if that makes it more clear.

In this version of the game there are 100 curtains. Behind one of those curtains is a prize and behind the other 99 curtains there is nothing.

You choose one curtain at random. I think everyone will agree that your chance of winning right now is 1%.

By making a choice you are dividing the curtains into two sets: the set you CHOSE, which has one curtain in it, has a 1% of being the winner and the set you did NOT choose, which has 99 curtains in it, has a 99% chance of having the winner. In the set you did not choose, the 99% chance of having the winner is divided between 99 curtains, so each of those curtain has a 1% chance of being the winner.

Now suppose the game show host opens 49 of the curtains you did not choose, to show you those 49 curtains have no prize behind them. That leaves 50 closed curtains in the set you did not choose but that set must still have a 99% chance of having the winner, so each of those curtains now has a 1.98% chance of winning. (99% chance of winning divided by 50 curtains.) The set you chose still has one curtain with a 1% chance of winning.

Next, imagine the game show host opens 40 more curtains in the set you did not choose and shows you that the prize is not behind any of those. Now there are just 10 curtains left in the set you did NOT choose but those 10 curtains must STILL share a 99% chance of having the winner so each of them has a 9.9% chance of being the winner.

Finally, imagine the game show host continuing to open curtains in the set you did not choose, and showing you that:
there is no prize behind this one,
or this one,
or this one...,
until there is only one curtain left. Since there was a 99% chance the prize was in the set of curtains you did not choose, and since there is now only one curtain left in that set, then the chance of that curtain having the prize behind it is 99%. The chance of the prize being behind the curtain you originally chose is still just 1%. Obviously, if you have the chance, and if you want to win, you should switch curtains.

Mystical Math and Lessons Learned

As we have said, this problem or paradox we have been discussing is so counter-intutive that even professional mathematicians have trouble accepting it as true. I hope that one or the other of the three explanations given above will help you to see that the strange result is true even if it remains strange!

Just to stress the strangeness let's think back to the third explanation given above and imagine a second contestant coming in right at the end when 98 curtains have been opened and you, contestant 1, are trying to decide whether to switch curtains or not.

This contestant 2 is told that we started with 100 curtains, one with a prize and 99 without a prize. He or she is told that the host opened 98 of the curtains with no prize so that now there are just two curtains left unopened. Contestant 2 is now asked to calculate the probabilities of the prize being behind one curtain or the other. Based on everything contestant 2 knows he says the probability is 50% for each curtain. That is is absolutely correct!

But then we ask you, contestant 1, to calculate the probabilities and you say that the probability for the curtain you originally chose is 1% and the probability for the one remaining curtain that you did not choose is 99%. That is also absolutely correct!

How can two people looking at the same two curtains come up with such radically different probabilities? What is different about contestant 1 and contestant 2 that leads to such a radical difference in the probabilities they CORRECTLY calculate?

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[Check out this book about mathematical paradoxes. I haven't read it yet so if you get to it first please write a little review I can publish here.]
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The difference is that contestant 1 started the game by CHOOSING one option and contestant 2 did not. It was a human choice that resulted in such a divergent calculation of probabilities later on. In a way, it was a human choice that changed reality in this problem. Human choices changing reality... that seems kind of MYSTICAL to me.

Finally, what should we learn from this seeming paradox? Most people who hear this problem for the first time, even experts, assume that it makes no difference whether you switch curtains or not. They are confident of that answer; they are sure they are right - but they are wrong!

If people can be wrong about an easy-to-describe problem like this how often do you think people might be wrong about complex political issues, and economic problems, and ethical disputes, and court cases on constitutional issues? How often must we be wrong about questions of social injustice, or war and peace, or how to grow the economy, or how to save the environment?

I'm not trying to promote skepticism here! Even though people are often SURE and just as often WRONG we can NEVER give up trying to improve our thinking and our understanding of truth. We need to think hard and make the best choices we can at each moment of our lives but THEN we have to keep going back to look at that issue again and again to see if we notice something we didn't notice before.

Don't make up your mind once and for all!

Especially when someone says we are wrong and they tell us they can explain why, we should stop and listen, and see if they have some new knowledge to impart to us.

Keep thinking! Keep learning! Never stop!

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Copyright © 2017 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

The North Pole Heats Up

According to this article (https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analyses/north-pole-nov-dec-2016/) the north pole was 23 degrees F warmer than average in November 2016. One of the charts in the article shows that arctic ice is down about 25% since 1978.

I think the critical questions about global warming are these:

1. Is it really happening or not?
2. Is it caused by human activities or not?
3. Can we stop it or not?
4. If we can stop it, how do we do that?
5. If we can't stop it, how do we prepare for the new and warmer world which will include massive relocations of populations away from current coastlines, more overcrowding of interior living spaces, more violent weather, more infectious disease, breakdown of agricultural economies near the equator, etc?

Many people are still grappling with (or stuck on) questions 1 and 2, including some of our new government officials here in the United States.

Most people have probably, by now, advanced to questions 3 and 4.

I am very much concerned we might actually be getting close to a point where it's too late to worry about questions 1-4 and we need to get to work on question 5.

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[This looks like a good book on global warming. If you read it before me please send a review I can publish here at AnythingSmart.

If you want to support AnythingSmart just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. AnythingSmart will receive a commission. Thanks!]

***

Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway

LSS: What is Lean?

Lean is one of the most powerful business improvement methods ever created.

If you use Lean correctly your business is going to improve and you are going to be more successful.

If you don't use Lean correctly, and your opponents do, they are going to beat you and put you out of business.

^^^

So, what is Lean?

The simplest explanation of Lean is this: it is a method for eliminating waste from your business.

A Lean business is one that is continually striving to eliminate waste, continually striving to attain that perfect state where there is no waste at all.

^^^

So, what is waste?

Lean businesses remember the one fundamental rule of success: there is nothing more important than serving your customers. If you serve customers better than your competitors than you will succeed. If your competitors serve customers better than you then THEY will succeed and you will NOT.

If we remember that serving customers is the supreme goal of the business then remembering what waste is will be easy: waste is anything that does not serve the customer!

^^^

So, what is the result of doing Lean correctly?

If you serve customers with single-minded devotion, and you do it better than any of your competitors, than you will end up with more orders from existing customers, your customers will be more satisfied, more delighted, and more loyal, and you will have more new customers.

If you combine these customer advantages with having less waste than your competitors then you will be using less money and less time and fewer other resources than they do, which means you will be more profitable.

Therefore, the ultimate result of doing Lean correctly is higher long-term profits than your competitors.

^^^

So, based on all of the above, this is the definition of Lean I use:

Lean is a method for achieving higher long-term profits than your competitors by radically focusing on your customer's needs and eliminating all waste from your organization.

Many people refer to the proccess of implementing Lean in a business as a "journey" because it takes time. There is work involved and attitudes to change and many things to learn that may seem far from intuitive. But if you think the destination is worth the journey, and if you are willing to make the trip, then at least there is no doubt what the road is: the road is called Lean.

[If you want to start a Lean journey this book will help.

If you want to support "Anything Smart" just click on book links like the one below to buy your books. "Anything Smart" will receive a commission. Thanks!]

Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Wayne Gadway