Reply #205: Thanks, TIA for the gracious comment

[Febble]

I'm juggling too many things at the moment (including two small boys in need of amusement) so no, please don't assume that silence means assent! And I've also been on holiday (southern France, since you ask, it was lovely).

But as it's hard to get much done with constant interruptions, I thought I'd drop in to see you guys again, having missed you all.

OTOH presented developments from my work at the ASA meeting, which is why my computer is full of his spreadsheets. I just wanted to scotch the notion that he was lazing around doing nothing. Alpha needs still needs a tweak or two.

I also respect the fact that you do your work in full view. It's a high risk strategy, of course, so I admire your courage. However, I don't think it's fair to assume that because others don't post tables that the tables don't exist (for a start I still haven't figured out how to format tables on DU - how do you do that?) Also tables aren't necessarily the form of communication of choice, especially to "non-quants" (although I've now figured out how to paste your output into Excel, by going into Word first and using convert-text-to-table.)

And although I realise you have categorized me and others as "naysayers" and therefore lose patience with us, I also don't think it is fair to assume that those of us who remain unconvinced that Kerry won the majority of the votes are saying "nay" to the case that the election was unfair, corrupt, and unauditable and that therefore the voting system requires radical reform.

Some of us think that the two issues need to be emphatically decoupled. The case for investigation into fraud is unassailable, whether or not it resulted in the wrong man being elected, as is the case for an auditable voting system. However, the case that Kerry won the popular vote IS assailable. As I've said elsewhere on this thread, people who are unconvinced that Kerry won the popular vote include people like Walter Mebane who has nonetheless written damningly on voter suppression in Ohio, and concluded that Gore would have won Florida in 2000 by over 30,000 if the voting system had been just. So the "naysayers" are not necessarily statistical ignoramuses or Republican shills.

If you post a link to the optimization thread you refer to, I'll take a look - though I don't promise a comment!