How not to be fooled by viral charts, Part 2

I came to realize that prediction in the era of Big Data was not going very well.

Not only does political coverage often lose the signal—it frequently accentuates the noise. If there are a number of polls in a state that show the Republican ahead, it won’t make news when another one says the same thing. But if a new poll comes out showing the Democrat with the lead, it will grab headlines—even though the poll is probably an outl