So the Washington Post this morning ran a piece arguing that Obama and his wife got "preferential treatment" on the mortgage when they bought their house in Chicago. A break from Countrywide or one of the evil Big Mortgage firms? Actually no- he probably just has good credit. Nate Silver:
One of the things that ties together my work over here and my work at Baseball Prospectus is that I want the media to be smarter and more accountable when they cite statistical information, be it mortgage rates or polling numbers or batting averages. This article was neither smart nor accountable. It's the equivalent of noting that Alex Rodriguez has a batting average 40 points better than the league average, and using that to infer that the umpires were biased in his favor.I got a pretty good interest rate when I bought my house a year ago; I guess that's another thing, along with my iPod contents, that disqualifies me from the presidency. Posted by Stephen Silver at July 2, 2008 03:57 PM