Nate Silver Makes Predictions About How I’ll Spend My Time Today
Learn what statistical chance I have of showering
I’m pretty sure a “confidence interval” is actually just a window pollsters use to climb out of if their predictions are wrong. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight himself is a man of many predictions, and just in case he doesn’t have his hands full already with predicting the election(s), he decided to throw out some guesses as to what I’ll do with myself today.
- Ginny has an 82% chance of crying by noon if the election is not yet decided. If it’s still not decided by 5 p.m., chances shoot up to 94%, with a range of error of +- 10%. Yes, I know this means she finds herself with a chance of crying of over 100%, but in my defense, the woman likes to cry.
- The probability that Ginny throws her phone across the room at some point today is about 100%. Which is to say, she’s already thrown her phone across the room.
- We’re forecasting a 65% chance of showering today. Chances go up to 85% of we see a Biden victory in the next seven hours, and Ginny decides to take a celebratory thirst trap. Our research team recognizes that Ginny takes thirst traps without showering all the time, so we’re more cautious about this one.
- Ginny is expected to earn a decisive victory over all four pints of Ben and Jerry’s in her refrigerator. The last remaining pint of ice cream — Birthday Cake Halo Top — is more of a toss-up. We expect Ginny has a 40% chance of consuming the Halo Top, but our statistical models suggest she’s going to opt for the ice cream that doesn’t taste like butt, first.
- With a three-point margin of error, we expect Ginny has a 70% chance of picking at least one fight online, and a 45% chance of picking two or more fights. Oh — wait — this just in. Ginny just picked a fight with her cousin Sue for posting on Facebook that it “looks good!” (Ginny doesn’t like optimism). We’ve now updated the priors, and Ginny has a 96% chance of picking an additional fight.
- Ginny is expected to open a Google Doc today with the intention of working no fewer than seven times. Our experts believe she will not do a single productive thing. This analysis actually is not remotely based on data, it’s just anecdotal (she’s generally unproductive).
- We predict a 14 in 100 chance that Ginny goes even four minutes without checking her Twitter today. If there were a situation in which she makes it past the four-minute mark, there’s a 92 in 100 chance it’s because her phone died, and she lost her charger.
- Ginny is expected to lose 25 Twitter followers today, plus or minus 100 followers (actually, +1, -100). This is unrelated to the election — a time series analysis shows that Ginny loses 25 followers every day.
- There is a 99 out of 100 chance Ginny asks her therapist for an emergency session.
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