Make Room for Pizza

At The New York Times FiveThirtyEight blog, Nate Silver writes that there is an unprecedented gap between Herman Cain's campaign fundamentals (money, organization, endorsements) and his standing in the polls:

Most of you, however, are interested in what will happen to Mr. Cain from here on out — can he actually win? What is an analyst to do when he encounters an outlier like this?

Well, I don’t know what he should do. This gets at something of the distinction that the economist Frank H. Knight once made between risk and uncertainty. To boil Mr. Knight’s complicated thesis down into a sentence: risk, essentially, is measurable whereas uncertainty is not measurable.

In Mr. Cain’s case, I think we are dealing with an instance where there is considerable uncertainty. Not only do I not know how I would go about estimating the likelihood that Mr. Cain will win the Republican nomination —I’m not sure that there is a good way to do so at all.

But I do know what an analyst should not do: he should not use terms like “never” and “no chance” when applied to Mr. Cain’s chances of winning the nomination, as many analysts have.

I think a Cain victory is highly unlikely, but not impossible, which is why I am promising pizza instead of gold bullion. I like Cain, so I would be in a good mood anyway. :-)