Quants V. Critics: Who Was Better At Predicting The Oscars?
Oscar Antoine TaveneauxIn our small sample, math models won out slightly over expert critics in predicting Oscar wins in our 10 favorite categories. It looks like you can mathematically predict the Oscars, after all--but you won't do much better than traditional critics. Last week, I spotlighted four quantitative Oscar predictions that left expertise and intuition entirely out of the equation. (Since I wrote that post, stats demigod Nate Silver came out with his statistical predictions, too.) I spent this morning comparing all those predictions to the predictions of traditional critics from a few major news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Next Movie and the New York Times (which also hosts Nate Silver's blog, so I guess the Grey Lady is hedging her bets). My limited sampling found that the quants did better than the film critics, but only by a little. On average, the models I found...