Hey man, you probably think I'm an idiot because I generally don't take things too seriously. But I have a graduate school research background and I know statistical analysis and regression pretty well. I know you understand this as well from your posts on climate change and what the data really shows.
Don't think you're an idiot and I'm not shocked that you're a STEM type of hooligan.. LOL...
Having said that my take on the MIT professor's data is this. I find it troubling, but I cannot say conclusive. Statistically virtually anything is possible given enough trials. Quantum mechanics comes to mind. The data set he presents is troubling because it does seem to correlate to potential voter fraud. But to prove that case in a Court of Law the correlation would need to be damn near 100%. He has not done that.
It's troubling because it CANT prove vote shifting. It's only variables used are SPVoting and "Other Trump votes".. HE LEAPS to conclusions about the number of votes "stolen" with NOTHING in either axis that relates to "differential partisan turnout" or "partisan race totals" or even the strength of Republicans in that precinct.. His use of Repub SPVoting as a proxy for Republican STRENGTH in that district is even a stretch. The two variables are VOTING CHOICES given to Republican voters in Mich. Not anything COMPETITIVE related to the race..
Of COURSE the slope of line is gonna go down.. Because he SET IT UP to go down.. ANY data spilled into those axes has a slope of (OTV - RSPV) / RSPV. BY DEFINITION it's gonna go down because as SPV GOES UP -- the Y point goes DOWN !!!! Because of the subtraction in the numerator and a LARGER reduction from the denominator..
Might work if the minus became a plus a bit better. And THAT would be a clear variable definition -- because with the + sign -- that's the Total Trump vote in that district..
OTV would only INCREASE in precincts that AREN'T predominately leftist,. And the 4 largest Mich counties - like any state -- ARE PREDOMINATELY left leaning by wide margin..
It's completely those 2 simplistic variables. His use of Repub SPVoting as a proxy for Republican STRENGTH in that district is even a stretch.. So -- it's easy math.. But the SET-up to the problem was bungled badly..
As a quick aside, me and a group of three other students in grad school did a lengthy study on adult children of alcoholics in helping professions. The hypothesis in the literature for years was these folks would gravitate to helping professions due to an externalized locus of control. That is, they are more comfortable externalizing their need for control in helping other versus dealing with their own shit. A fancy construct basically akin to the idea of codependency.
We used medical students and graduate social work students as the experimental group, and graduate business students as the control. Long story short, there was no statistically significant difference. The adult children of alcoholic business students perceived their role as "helping," that is, "I want to help people with their taxes." Hahaha. Funny stuff. There was a qualitative as well as quantitative measures. The data was rock solid.
I mention this because it involved an arrow issue which often happens in reasearch but rarely gets mentioned. Which variable is truly the dependent variable versus the independent. What is really affecting what? Which way is the arrow pointing. This is often overlooked or misunderstood.
This MIT professor's data sets up a construct that makes many assumptions that may not fully conform to the reality, and then there is the question of which variables are truly influencing which variables. That is, which way is the arrow pointing?
Your concerns about his data set are valid in my opinion, but I think there is enough there to warrant a closer examination of possible fraud.
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