In Election 2016, Why Big Data Took a Tumble

The Presidential election results threw Silicon Valley off in more ways than one. Not only did the favored candidate fail to get elected, the surprise result called into question the fancy algorithms and reams of data that said she would. Many pundits wrote after-the-fact essays, but, one, at the New York Times, was insightful. The authors understood the import of the unexpected results:

Donald J. Trump's victory ran counter to almost every major forecast -- undercutting the belief that anal...