In less than a month, the 2012 presidential election turned from an almost certain victory for President Obama to a neck-and-neck race. New York Times blogger and statistician Nate Silver and Princeton neuroscientist Sam Wang talk about making sense of the polls—and why not all votes are created equal.
Segment Guests
Nate Silver
Nate Silver is the author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t (The Penguin Press, 2012) and the writer of the FiveThirtyEight blog on The New York Times. He is based in New York City, New York.
Sam Wang
Sam Wang is the founder of the Princeton Election Consortium and an associate professor of neuroscience and molecular biology at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.
Meet the Producers and Host
About Christopher Intagliata
@cintagliataChristopher Intagliata was Science Friday’s senior producer. He once served as a prop in an optical illusion and speaks passable Ira Flatowese.
About Jon Chang
Jon Chang is a science reporter based in New York City. He also has an unhealthy obsession with math, even if he’s not very good at it.