Posts by Rob Salmond
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Polity: Leaving only footprints, in reply to izogi,
Mangahao valley (Tararuas) this time, and Mukamuka stream (Rimutakas) earlier in the year.
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Thanks all for your very nice welcome. And thanks also for your kind words about Sophie. I'm glad people find value in learning about struggles such as hers.
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Looks like the PA tech gurus have already done shifted the Speaker posts. They're slick!
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@Russell: People qualify so long as they've had *no* previous post-school education.
And yes, ability to properly cost the impact of a clause removing all restrictions on access for people in sunset industries did make it harder to go down that path. If only somewhere like the Treasury has some manner of policy costings unit...
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@bob: Yep, Leaders of the Opposition have had this fund for a while. It can be used for preparation-to-be-PM across any policy area, not just foreign policy and economics. It's only available to the leader of the largest opposition party, although there may be other facilities I'm unaware of for leaders of other parties.
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@Matthew: I wonder if there's anywhere people could read, say, David Farrar on John Key. Any recommendations?
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Polity: Hosking’s right about jobs, in reply to BenWilson,
@Ben:
'm curious, Robert, who it is that Labour sees as the target voter for this kind of push. Is it the unemployed themselves? Do they have some kind of evidence or information about just which voters might think jobs is the number one issue to the point that it changes the way they vote?
Second point first: Yes, Labour does have evidence about which kinds of people see jobs as their number one issue. For what I hope are obvious reasons, I won't be sharing the specifics of that information publicly.
However - and this comes to your first point - the group that cares deeply about "jobs" goes well beyond the unemployed themselves. There are, of course, people who aren't unemployed but are underemployed or insecure in their employment. And most people who are unemployed, underemployed, or insecure in their work have a partner, kids, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbours, work mates, team mates, church mates, and so on, some of whom will see "jobs" as an issue that affects "my friend June" or "my mate Hemi" rather than just "the unemployed.
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@DPF: Completely agree that prediction markets are imperfect - I remember one saying ACT would get 4, when it actually got 1 very shortly thereafter. Butthey're not all bad - for election 2011 iPredict outperformed all the pollsters and pol of pollsters, including you and me both.
Glad we're agreed Winston will quite likely hold balance of power though. I'm sure your boss doesn't share your hope about what he'll do..
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Polity: A hazy, intriguing crystal ball, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Has anyone ever examined correlations between iPredict and future realities?
Actually, lots of people have studied connections between prediction markets and actual outcome, including the specific case of iPredict. The foundational reference is The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), and Justin Wolfers and Douglas Hubbard among others have done a lot of work since figuring out whether prediction markets are any good at their job. They tend to do pretty eel, although of course they're not perfect.
For iPredict in particular, I study I did of predictions about the 2011 election. It’s in the VUW post-election book for 2011. iPredict beat out all the TV polls, and beat out the poll-averagers, too. It performs OK.
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Polity: The pantheon of sporting dominance, in reply to BenWilson,
Statistically, we’re simply not comparing like with like. Features of the games themselves and the nature of the competitions will account for most of the differences. The low scores, the sheer number of people playing, the number of people on the field/court/pitch/whatever, and the level of exclusiveness to the play. We’re probably up there with Ozzie in sheep shearing and dog trials. The New York Yacht club held the America’s Cup for over 100 years.
Certainly you're right that any cross-code comparisons are going to be a little rough. But "win" and "lose" are reasonably universal in sports, especially in events where people play opponents one at a time, rather than everyone at once (like golf or cycling). And I feel OK about getting rid of ease-or-difficulty-of drawing by concentrating only on wins and losses where necessary.
NY Yacht Club is a good comparator, though.