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Wikipedia

Nate Silver

April 09, 2024

This article is about the author and statistician. For the American football player, see Nate Silver (quarterback). For the American filmmaker, see Nathan Silver.

Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections. He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023.[2]

Nate Silver
Silver playing poker at Manifest 2023
Born
Nathaniel Read Silver

(1978-01-13) January 13, 1978 (age 46)[1]
East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Chicago (BA)
Occupation(s)Statistician, journalist
Years active2000–present
Known forPECOTA, FiveThirtyEight
Websitenatesilver.substack.com

Silver was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2009 after an election forecasting system he developed successfully predicted the outcomes in forty-nine of the fifty states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.[3] His subsequent election forecasting systems predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with a high degree of accuracy. His polls-only model gave Donald Trump only a 28.6% chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election,[4] but this was higher than many other forecasting competitors.[5]

Much of Silver's approach can be characterized by using probabilistic and statistical modeling to try to understand complex social systems, such as professional sports, the popularity of political platforms, and elections.

Early life and education edit

Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan, the son of Sally (née Thrun), a community activist, and Brian David Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University.[6][7] Silver's mother's family was of English and German descent. His maternal great-grandfather, Harmon Lewis, was president of the Alcoa Steamship Company, Inc.[8] Silver's father's family includes two uncles—Leon Silver and Caswell Silver—who were distinguished geologists. Silver has described himself as "half-Jewish".[8][9]

Silver showed a proficiency in math from a young age.[10] According to journalist William Hageman, "Silver caught the baseball bug when he was 6.... It was 1984, the year the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. The Tigers became his team and baseball his sport. And if there's anything that goes hand in glove with baseball, it's numbers, another of Silver's childhood interests ("It's always more interesting to apply it to batting averages than algebra class")".[11]

As a student at East Lansing High School, Silver won first place in the State of Michigan in the 49th annual John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters in 1996.[12] Silver first showed his journalism skills as a writer and opinion page editor for The Portrait, East Lansing High School's student newspaper, from 1993–1996.[13]

In 2000, Silver graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He also wrote for the Chicago Weekly News and the Chicago Maroon. He spent his third year at the London School of Economics.[14]

Career edit

Economic consultant: 2000–2004 edit

After college graduation in 2000, Silver worked for three and a half years as a transfer pricing consultant with KPMG in Chicago. When asked in 2009, "What is your biggest regret in life?" Silver responded, "Spending four years of my life at a job I didn't like".[15] While employed at KPMG, Silver continued to nurture his lifelong interest in baseball and statistics, and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers. He quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker.[16] According to Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff, over a three-year period Silver earned $400,000 from online poker.[17]

Baseball analyst: 2003–2008 edit

In 2003, Silver became a writer for Baseball Prospectus (BP), after having sold PECOTA to BP in return for a partnership interest. After resigning from KPMG in 2004, he took the position of Executive Vice-President, later renamed Managing Partner of BP. Silver further developed PECOTA and wrote a weekly column under the heading "Lies, Damned Lies". He applied sabermetric techniques to a broad range of topics including forecasting the performance of individual players, the economics of baseball, metrics for the valuation of players, and developing an Elo rating system for Major League baseball.[18]

Between 2003 and 2009, Silver co-authored the Baseball Prospectus annual book of Major League Baseball forecasts,[19] as well as other books, including Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning,[20] Baseball Between the Numbers,[21] and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.[22]

He contributed articles about baseball to ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the New York Sun, and The New York Times.[23]

Silver wrote more than 200 articles for Baseball Prospectus.[24]

PECOTA edit

Main article: PECOTA

PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) is a statistical system that projects the future performance of hitters and pitchers. It is designed primarily for two users: fans interested in fantasy baseball, and professionals in the baseball business trying to predict the performance and valuation of major league players. Unlike most other baseball projection systems, PECOTA relies on matching a given current player to a set of "comparable" players whose past performance can serve as a guide to how the given current player is likely to perform in the future. Unlike most other such systems, PECOTA also calculates a range of probable performance levels rather than a single predicted value on a given measure such as earned run average or batting average.

PECOTA projections were first published by Baseball Prospectus in the 2003 edition of its annual book as well as online by BaseballProspectus.com. Silver produced the PECOTA forecasts for each Major League Baseball season from 2003 through 2009.[25]

Political analyst and blogger: since 2008 edit

FiveThirtyEight blog edit

Main article: FiveThirtyEight

Creation and motivation edit

 
Silver at SXSW in 2009

On November 1, 2007, while still employed by Baseball Prospectus, Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym "Poblano" on the progressive political blog Daily Kos.[26] Silver set out to analyze quantitative aspects of the political game to enlighten a broader audience. Silver reports that "he was stranded in a New Orleans airport when the idea of FiveThirtyEight.com came to him. 'I was just frustrated with the analysis. ... I saw a lot of discussion about strategy that was not all that sophisticated, especially when it came to quantitative things like polls and demographics'".[27] His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew a lot of attention, including being cited by The New York Times op-ed columnist William Kristol.[28]

On March 7, 2008, while still writing as "Poblano", Silver established his own blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. Often colloquially referred to as just 538, the website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college.[29]

On May 30, 2008, Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight.com readers.[30] On June 1, 2008, Silver published a two-page op-ed in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics.[31] He first appeared on national television on CNN's American Morning on June 13, 2008.[32]

Silver described his partisan orientation as follows in the FAQ on his website: "My state [Illinois] has non-partisan registration, so I am not registered as anything. I vote for Democratic candidates the majority of the time (though by no means always). This year, I have been a supporter of Barack Obama".[33] With respect to the impartiality of his electoral projections, Silver stated, "Are [my] results biased toward [my] preferred candidates? I hope not, but that is for you to decide. I have tried to disclose as much about my methodology as possible".[33]

2008 election and aftermath edit

Shortly after the November 4 election, ESPN writer Jim Caple observed, "Forget Cole Hamels and the Phillies. No one in baseball had a more impressive fall than Nate Silver.... [R]ight now Silver is exhausted. He barely slept the last couple weeks of the campaign—'By the end, it was full-time plus'—and for that matter, he says he couldn't have kept it up had the campaign lasted two days longer. Plus, he has his Baseball Prospectus duties. 'We write our [Baseball Prospectus 2009] book from now through the first of the year,' [Silver] said. 'I have a week to relax and then it gets just as busy again. In February 2009 I will just have to find an island in the Caribbean and throw my BlackBerry in the ocean'".[34]

Later in November 2008, Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for a $700,000 advance.[35]

Silver was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009,[36] and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference (March 2009).[37]

While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight.com website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data", in Esquire[38] as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times[39] and The Wall Street Journal.[40] He also tried his luck in the 2009 World Series of Poker.[41]

The success of his FiveThirtyEight.com blog marked the effective end of Silver's career as baseball analyst, though he continued to devote some attention to sports statistics and sports economics in his blog. In March 2009, he stepped down as Managing Partner of Baseball Prospectus and handed over responsibility for producing future PECOTA projections to other Baseball Prospectus staff members.[25] In April 2009, he appeared as an analyst on ESPN's Baseball Tonight. After March 2009, he published only two "Lies, Damned Lies" columns on BaseballProspectus.com.

In November 2009, ESPN introduced a new Soccer Power Index (SPi),[42] designed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.[43] He published a post-mortem after the tournament, comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems.[44]

In April 2010, in an assignment for New York magazine, Silver created a quantitative index of "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York".[45]

Transition to The New York Times edit

On June 3, 2010, Silver announced on FiveThirtyEight

In the near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL. In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of The New York Times, and to the Sunday Magazine. The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years.[46][47][48]

The New York Times "FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus" commenced on August 25, 2010, with the publication of "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats".[49] From that date the blog focused almost exclusively on forecasting the outcomes of the 2010 U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives elections as well as state gubernatorial contests. Silver's Times Sunday Magazine feature first appeared on November 19, 2010, under the heading "Go Figure".[50] It was later titled "Acts of Mild Subversion".[51]

While blogging for The Times, Silver also worked on his book about prediction, which was published in September 2012. At that time, Silver began to drop hints that after 2012 he would turn his attention to matters other than detailed statistical forecasting of elections. As reported in New York magazine: " 'I view my role now as providing more of a macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil,' he says. And in four [years], he might be even more macro, as he turns his forecasting talents to other fields. 'I'm 97 percent sure that the FiveThirtyEight model will exist in 2016,' he says, 'but it could be someone else who's running it or licensing it.'"[52]

During the last year of FiveThirtyEight's license to The New York Times, it drew a very large volume of online traffic to the paper:

The Times does not release traffic figures, but a spokesperson said yesterday that Silver's blog provided a significant—and significantly growing, over the past year—percentage of Times pageviews. This fall, visits to the Times' political coverage (including FiveThirtyEight) have increased, both absolutely and as a percentage of site visits. But FiveThirtyEight's growth is staggering: where earlier this year, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of politics visits included a stop at FiveThirtyEight, last week that figure was 71 percent.

But Silver's blog has buoyed more than just the politics coverage, becoming a significant traffic-driver for the site as a whole. Earlier this year, approximately 1 percent of visits to the New York Times included FiveThirtyEight. Last week, that number was 13 percent. Yesterday, it was 20 percent. That is, one in five visitors to the sixth-most-trafficked U.S. news site took a look at Silver's blog.[53]

Departure from The Times edit

Silver on leaving The New York Times

In an online chat session a week after the 2012 election Silver commented: "As tempting as it might be to pull a Jim Brown/Sandy Koufax and just mic-drop/retire from elections forecasting, I expect that we'll be making forecasts in 2014 and 2016. Midterm elections can be dreadfully boring, unfortunately. But the 2016 G.O.P. primary seems almost certain to be epic."[54] In late November 2012, Times executive editor Jill Abramson declared her wish to keep Silver and his blog: "We would love to have Nate continue to be part of the New York Times family, and to expand on what he does", she said. "We know he began in sports anyway, so it is not an exclusively political product. I am excited to talk to Nate when he finishes his book tour about ways to expand that kind of reporting."[55]

On July 22, 2013, ESPN (a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company) announced that it had acquired ownership of the FiveThirtyEight website and brand, and that "Silver will serve as editor-in-chief of the site and will build a team of journalists, editors, analysts and contributors in the coming months."[56]

The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote of Silver's decision to leave for ESPN:

I don't think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was aware of that. He was, in a word, disruptive. Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie "Moneyball" disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players, Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics.[57]

She added, "A number of traditional and well-respected Times journalists disliked his work."[58] Later, Sullivan wrote in The Times that "I don't feel so good about not being able to investigate every complaint from every individual reader fully, or about making some misjudgments in individual posts — my Nate Silver commentary, among others, has probably been off-base...".[59]

New York magazine reported that executive editor Jill Abramson "put on a full-court press" to keep Silver at The Times and that "for Abramson, Silver was a tentpole attraction for her favorite subject, national politics, and brought the kind of buzz she thought valuable", but the company's CEO and President Mark Thompson "confirmed that keeping Silver was not at the top of his agenda." The article stated that "the major reason Silver left was because he felt it was Thompson who had not committed to building his franchise. The mixed signals from Thompson and Abramson—his lack of enthusiasm for committing resources to Silver, her desire to keep a major star—frustrated Silver and his lawyer."[60]

FiveThirtyEight under Disney ownership edit

When FiveThirtyEight was relaunched under Disney's ESPN on March 17, 2014, Silver outlined the scope of topics that would be covered under the rubric of "data journalism":[61]

We've expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports. Our team also has a broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism. These include statistical analysis, but also data visualization, computer programming and data-literate reporting. So in addition to written stories, we'll have interactive graphics and features. Within a couple of months we'll launch a podcast, and we'll be collaborating with ESPN Films and Grantland to produce original documentary films.

In 2018, the Walt Disney Company transferred the FiveThirtyEight site from the ESPN division to the ABC News division. In April 2023, amid widespread layoffs at Disney and ABC affecting FiveThirtyEight, Silver announced that his contract with ABC would not be extended. After Silver's departure in May, a smaller FiveThirtyEight continues to operate under the data analytics division of ABC News.[2]

FiveThirtyEight's election forecasts edit

2008 U.S. elections edit

Main article: FiveThirtyEight

In March 2008, Silver established his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, in which he developed a system for tracking polls and forecasting the outcome of the 2008 general election. At the same time, he continued making forecasts of the 2008 Democratic primary elections. That several of his forecasts based on demographic analysis proved to be substantially more accurate than those of the professional pollsters gained visibility and professional credibility for "Poblano", the pseudonym that Silver was then using.[62]

After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6, the popularity of FiveThirtyEight.com surged. Silver recalls the scenario: "I know the polls show it's really tight in NC, but we think Obama is going to win by thirteen, fourteen points, and he did. ... Any time you make a prediction like that people give you probably too much credit for it.... But after that [Silver's and the website's popularity] started to really take off. It's pretty nonlinear, once you get one mention in the mainstream media, other people [quickly follow suit]".[63]

As a CNET reporter wrote on election eve, "Even though Silver launched the site as recently as March, its straightforward approach, daring predictions, and short but impressive track record has put it on the map of political sites to follow."[64]

Silver's final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, missing only the prediction for Indiana. As his model predicted, the races in Missouri and North Carolina were particularly close. He also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race. The accuracy of his predictions won him further acclaim, including abroad,[65] and added to his reputation as a leading political prognosticator.[66]

Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign signed off on a proposal to share all of its private polling with Silver. After signing a confidentiality agreement, Silver was granted access to hundreds of polls the campaign had conducted.[67][68]

2010 U.S. elections edit

Main article: FiveThirtyEight § 2010 U.S. mid-term elections

Shortly after FiveThirtyEight relocated to The New York Times, Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state governorships. Each of these models relied initially on a combination of electoral history, demographics, and polling. Silver eventually published detailed forecasts and analyses of the results for all three sets of elections. He correctly predicted the winner in 34 of the 37 contested Senate races. His 2010 congressional mid-term predictions were not as accurate as those made in 2008, but were still within the reported confidence interval. Silver predicted a Republican pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives; the GOP won 63 seats. Of the 37 gubernatorial races, FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner of 36.[69]

2012 U.S. elections edit

Main article: FiveThirtyEight: 2012 U.S. elections

Although throughout 2011 Silver devoted a lot of attention on his blog to the 2012 Republican party primaries, his first effort to handicap the 2012 presidential general election appeared as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine a year prior to the election: "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election".[70] Accompanying the online release of this article, Silver also published "Choose Obama's Re-Election Adventure", an interactive toy that allowed readers to predict the outcome of the election based on their assumptions about three variables: President Obama's favorability ratings, the rate of GDP growth, and how conservative the Republican opponent would be.[71] This analysis stimulated a lot of critical discussion.[72]

While publishing numerous stories on the Republican primary elections, in mid-February 2012 Silver reprised and updated his previous Magazine story with another one, "What Obama Should Do Next".[73] This story painted a more optimistic picture of President Obama's re-election chances. A companion article on his FiveThirtyEight blog, "The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama", explained how the model and the facts on the ground had changed between November and February.[74]

Silver published the first iteration of his 2012 general election forecasts on June 7, 2012. According to the model, at that time Barack Obama was projected to win 291 electoral votes—21 more than the 270 required for a majority. Obama then had an estimated 61.8% chance of winning a majority.[75]

On the morning of the November 6, 2012, presidential election, the final update of Silver's model at 10:10 A.M. gave President Barack Obama a 90.9% chance of winning a majority of the 538 electoral votes.[76] Both in summary tables and in an electoral map, Silver forecast the winner of each state. At the conclusion of that day, when Mitt Romney had conceded to Barack Obama, Silver's model had correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.[77][78] Silver, along with at least three[79] academic-based analysts—Drew Linzer,[80] Simon Jackman,[81] and Josh Putnam[82]—who also aggregated polls from multiple pollsters—thus was not only broadly correct about the election outcome, but also specifically predicted the outcomes for the nine swing states.[83] In contrast, individual pollsters were less successful. For example, Rasmussen Reports "missed on six of its nine swing-state polls".[84][85][86]

2016 U.S. elections edit

Main article: FiveThirtyEight: 2016 U.S. elections

In the week leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the FiveThirtyEight team predicted that Hillary Clinton had a 64.5% chance of winning the election. Their final prediction on November 8, 2016, gave Clinton a 71% chance to win the 2016 United States presidential election,[87] while other major forecasters had predicted Clinton to win with at least an 85% to 99% probability.[88][89] Donald Trump won the election. FiveThirtyEight argued it projected a much higher chance (29%) of Donald Trump winning the presidency than other modelers,[88] a projection which was criticized days before the election by Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post as "unskewing" too much in favor of Trump.[90]

2020 U.S. elections edit

Main article: FiveThirtyEight: 2020 U.S. elections

In their final prediction of the 2020 United States presidential election, FiveThirtyEight predicted that Joe Biden had an 89% chance of winning the election;[91] Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. FiveThirtyEight only missed Florida, North Carolina, and Maine's 2nd congressional district in their projections. Donald Trump prevailed in each of these contests, in which FiveThirtyEight forecasted the better chances for Biden to win.

Reception edit

Silver has been criticized for inaccurate predictions. In January 2010, journalist and blogger Colby Cosh criticized Silver's performance during the Massachusetts special Senate election, saying he was "still arguing as late as Thursday afternoon that [Martha] Coakley was the clear favourite; he changed his mind at midnight that evening and acknowledged that Scott Brown had a puncher's chance." (Brown won the election.)[92]

Silver's quantitative focus on polling data, without insight from experience in political organizing or journalism, has been a recurring critique from experienced commentators. Huffington Post columnist Geoffrey Dunn described Silver as someone who "has never organized a precinct in his life, much less walked one, pontificating about the dynamics in the electoral processes as if he actually understood them."[93]

Considerable criticism during the 2012 elections came from political conservatives, who argued that Silver's election projections were politically biased against Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president.[94] For example, Silver was accused of applying a double standard to his treatment of Rasmussen Reports polls, such as a 2010 analysis asserting a statistical bias in its methodology.[95] Josh Jordan wrote in National Review that Silver clearly favored Obama and adjusted the weight he gave polls "based on what [he] think[s] of the pollster and the results and not based on what is actually inside the poll".[96]

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough stated that Silver's prediction that day of a 73.6% chance of a win for Obama greatly exceeded the confidence of the Obama campaign itself, which Scarborough equated to that of the Romney campaign, both believing "they have a 50.1 percent chance of winning", and calling Silver an "ideologue" and a "joke". Silver responded with the offer of a $1,000 wager (for charity) over the outcome of the election. The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, while defending Silver's analysis, characterized the wager as "a bad idea" as it gave the appearance of a partisan motive for Silver, and "inappropriate" for someone perceived as a Times journalist (although Silver was not a member of the newspaper's staff).[97][98]

After a post-election appearance by Silver on Joe Scarborough's Morning Joe, Scarborough published what he called a "(semi) apology", in which he concluded:

"I won't apologize to Mr. Silver for predicting an outcome that I had also been predicting for a year. But I do need to tell Nate I'm sorry for leaning in too hard and lumping him with pollsters whose methodology is as rigorous as the Simpsons' strip mall physician, Dr. Nick. For those sins (and a multitude of others that I'm sure I don't even know about), I am sorry.

Politics is a messy sport. And just as ball players who drink beer and eat fried chicken in dugouts across America can screw up the smartest sabermetrician's forecast, Nate Silver's formula is sure to let his fervent admirers down from time to time. But judging from what I saw of him this morning, Nate is a grounded guy who admits as much in his book. I was too tough on him and there's a 84.398264% chance I will be less dismissive of his good work in the future."[99]

Silver's nondisclosure of the details of his analytical model has resulted in some skepticism. Washington Post journalist Ezra Klein wrote: "There are good criticisms to make of Silver's model, not the least of which is that, while Silver is almost tediously detailed about what's going on in the model, he won't give out the code, and without the code, we can't say with certainty how the model works."[100] Colby Cosh wrote that the model "is proprietary and irreproducible. That last feature makes it unwise to use Silver's model as a straw stand-in for "science", as if the model had been fully specified in a peer-reviewed journal".[101]

The Signal and the Noise edit

Main article: The Signal and the Noise
 
Silver signing a copy of The Signal and the Noise at SXSW 2013

The Signal and The Noise was published in the United States on September 27, 2012. It reached the New York Times Best Sellers List as #12 for non-fiction hardback books after its first week in print. It dropped to #20 in the second week, before rising to #13 in the third, and remaining on the non-fiction hardback top 15 list for the following 13 weeks, with a highest weekly ranking of #4.[102] Sales increased after the election on November 6, jumping 800% and becoming the second best seller on Amazon.com.[103]

The book describes methods of mathematical model-building using probability and statistics. Silver takes a big-picture approach to using statistical tools, combining sources of unique data (e.g., timing a minor league ball player's fastball using a radar gun), with historical data and principles of sound statistical analysis; Silver argues that many of these are violated by many pollsters and pundits who nonetheless have important media roles. Case studies in the book include baseball, elections, climate change, the financial crash, poker, and weather forecasting. These different topics illustrate different statistical principles. As a reviewer in The New York Times notes: "It's largely about evaluating predictions in a variety of fields, from finance to weather to epidemiology. We learn about a handful of successes: when, for instance, meteorologists predict a hurricane's landfall 72 hours in advance.... But mostly we learn about failures. It turns out we're not even close to predicting the next catastrophic earthquake or the spread of the next killer bird flu, despite the enormous amounts of brainpower trained on these questions in the past few decades".[104]

Blogs and other publications edit

Blogs
  • FiveThirtyEight blog, now owned by ABC
  • Nate Silver's Baseball Prospectus article archive (2003–2009)
  • Nate Silver's The Burrito Bracket (2007)
Other publications
  • Nate Silver, "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York: A Quantitative Index of the 50 Most Satisfying Places to Live", New York, April 11, 2010.
  • Nate Silver, "The Influence Index", Time, April 29, 2010.
  • Nate Silver and Walter Hickey, "Best Picture Math", Vanity Fair, March 2014.
  • Gareth Cook (Editor), Nate Silver (Introduction). The Best American Infographics 2014, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0547974514.
  • Review of two children's books, with an autobiographical comment: "Beautiful Minds: The Boy Who Loved Math and On a Beam of Light", The New York Times, July 12, 2013.
  • Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, Aaron S. Edlin, "What Is the Probability Your Vote Will Make a Difference", Economic Inquiry, 2012, 50(2): 321–26.
  • In addition to chapters in several issues of the Baseball Prospectus annual, Silver contributed chapters to one-off monographs edited by Baseball Prospectus, including:
    • Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning. Steven Goldman, Ed. New York: Workman Publishing Co., 2005. ISBN 0-7611-4018-2.
    • Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong. Jonah Keri, Ed. New York: Basic Books, 2006. ISBN 0-465-00596-9 (hardback) and ISBN 0-465-00547-0 (paperback).
    • It Ain't over 'til It's over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book. Steven Goldman, Ed. New York: Basic Books. Hardback 2007. ISBN 0-465-00284-6; paperback 2008. ISBN 0-465-00285-4.

Media edit

Silver's self-unmasking at the end of May 2008 brought him a lot of publicity focused on his combined skill as both baseball statistician-forecaster and political statistician-forecaster, including articles about him in The Wall Street Journal,[105] Newsweek,[106] Science News,[107][108] and his hometown Lansing State Journal.[109]

In early June he began to cross-post his daily "Today's Polls" updates on "The Plank" in The New Republic.[110] Also, Rasmussen Reports began to use the FiveThirtyEight.com poll averages for its own tracking of the 2008 state-by-state races.[111]

In 2009 through 2012, Silver appeared as a political analyst on MSNBC,[112] CNN[113] and Bloomberg Television,[114][115] PBS,[116] NPR,[117] Democracy Now!,[118] The Charlie Rose Show,[119] ABC News,[120] and Current TV.[121]

Silver also appeared on The Colbert Report (October 7, 2008, and November 5, 2012),[122] The Daily Show (October 17, 2012, and November 7, 2012),[123] and Real Time with Bill Maher (October 26, 2012).[124]

That Silver accurately predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential race, in the face of numerous public attacks on his forecasts by critics, inspired many articles in the press, ranging from Gizmodo,[125] to online and mainstream newspapers,[126] news and commentary magazines,[127] business media,[128] trade journals,[129] media about media,[130] and Scientific American,[131] as well as a feature interview on The Today Show,[132] a return appearance on The Daily Show,[133] and an appearance on Morning Joe.[134]

Silver's first appearance on ABC News as Editor-in-Chief of the new FiveThirtyEight.com was on George Stephanopoulos's This Week on November 3, 2013.[135]

Silver is referenced in the Syfy channel show The Magicians as an earth wizard who uses polling spells.[136]

In 2015, Silver appeared on the podcast Employee of the Month, where he criticized Vox Media for "recycling Wikipedia entries" in their content.[137]

Selected recognition and awards edit

  • April 30, 2009: Silver was named one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by TIME magazine.[3]
  • May 12, 2013: Silver received an honorary Doctor of Science degree (Scientiæ Doctor honoris causa – D.Sc. h.c.) and gave the commencement address at Ripon College.[138]
  • May 24, 2013: Silver received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree (Doctor of Literature honoris causa) and presented a commencement address at The New School.[139]
  • October 2013: Silver's The Signal and the Noise won the 2013 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, which recognizes "outstanding contributions by scientists to the literature of science".[140]
  • December 2013: The University of Leuven (KU Leuven) (Belgium) and the Leuven Statistics Research Centre awarded Silver an honorary doctoral degree "for his prominent role in the development, application, and dissemination of proper prediction methods in sports and in political sciences".[141][142]
  • May 25, 2014: Silver received a Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Amherst College.[143][144]
  • May 2017: Georgetown University awarded Silver a degree of Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa.[145]
  • May 2018: Kenyon College awarded Silver a degree, Doctor of Humane Letters.[146]

Personal life edit

Silver is a great-nephew of geologists Caswell Silver and Leon Silver. He is a great-grandson of Harmon Lewis, the President of Alcoa Steamship Company,[147] as well as a great-great-nephew of the embryologist Warren Harmon Lewis and his wife, biologist Margaret Reed Lewis.[citation needed]

Silver is gay.[148] "I've always felt like something of an outsider. I've always had friends but I've always come from an outside point of view. I think that's important. If you grow up gay, or in a household that's agnostic, when most people are religious, then from the get-go, you are saying there are things that the majority of society believes that I don't believe", he told an interviewer in 2012.[149] When asked "what made you feel more of a misfit, being gay or being a geek", he replied, "Probably the numbers stuff since I had that from when I was six."[149] When asked in 2008 if he had noticed people looking at him as a "gay icon", he responded, "I've started to notice it a little bit, although so far it seems like I'm more a subject of geek affection than gay affection".[150]

Silver discussed his sexuality in the context of growing up in East Lansing, in an article about the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v. Hodges in favor of recognizing same-sex marriage on the date of its announcement. He analyzed the speed of the change of public sentiment, pointing out that the change over only several decades has been palpable to the current generations.[151]

Silver has long been interested in fantasy baseball, especially Scoresheet Baseball.[152] While in college he served as an expert on Scoresheet Baseball for BaseballHQ.[153] When he took up political writing, Silver abandoned his blog, The Burrito Bracket,[154] in which he ran a one-and-done competition among the taquerias in his Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago.[155]

Silver plays poker semi-professionally.[156][41] He has $811,142 in total tournament earnings, including an 87th place finish in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event.[157][158]

Political views edit

In a 2012 interview with Charlie Rose, Silver said, "I'd say I'm somewhere in between being a libertarian and a liberal. So if I were to vote, it would be kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision, I suppose."[159] In a 2023 newsletter, Silver said that he misspoke during that interview, and meant to say that he would have chosen between Johnson and Barack Obama. He added that he has voted Democratic in every presidential election he voted in, though he voted for John Kasich in the 2016 New York Republican presidential primary, as he believed "the difference between a Kasich-led GOP and a Trump-led GOP would make a large difference to the future of the country". Silver also criticized "the progressive political class", believing that it had become "more left and less liberal".[160]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "Nate Silver tweet". Twitter.com. August 13, 2010. from the original on February 20, 2012. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
  2. ^ a b Stieb, Matt (May 19, 2023). "A Brutal Wonk Swap at FiveThirtyEight". Intelligencer. from the original on June 2, 2023. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  3. ^ a b Stein, Joel. . TIME. Archived from the original on May 8, 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2009.
  4. ^ Silver, Nate (June 29, 2016). "2016 Election Forecast". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved November 7, 2023.
  5. ^ Katz, Josh (November 8, 2016). "Who Will Be President?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 21, 2021.
  6. ^ "Wallbank, Lansing State Journal". Pqasb.pqarchiver.com. July 5, 2008. from the original on July 25, 2012. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
  7. ^ Silver, Nate (September 27, 2012). The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't. Penguin. ISBN 978-1-101-59595-4. from the original on June 29, 2016. The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning
  8. ^ a b Bloom, Nate. "Interfaith Celebrities: Nate Silver, Another Bond, and Happy Endings". InterfaithFamily. from the original on August 27, 2014. Retrieved December 5, 2013. This source also gives the origin of Silver's middle name, Read, which was shared by his mother's mother and sister. Silver has a namesake, "Nathaniel Read" in the family line that dates from the early 18th century.
  9. ^ "Answer This: Nate Silver - Patrick Gavin". Politico.Com. October 5, 2012. from the original on March 29, 2014. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  10. ^ Clifford, Stephanie (November 9, 2008). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 24, 2015.
  11. ^ Hageman, William (January 4, 2006). "Baseball by the Numbers". Chicago Tribune. from the original on April 5, 2023. Retrieved March 23, 2021.
  12. ^ "East Lansing Debater Wins Scholarship", Detroit Free Press (February 29, 1996). Also see Patricia Montemurri, "Michigan native Nate Silver shows election predictions aren't magic but math", Detroit Free Press, November 11, 2012 September 24, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ Swasko, Mick (November 8, 2012). . Archived from the original on November 8, 2012. Retrieved November 8, 2012.
  14. ^ Silver, Nate (May 25, 2009). . FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on May 28, 2009.
  15. ^ Stephen J. Dubner, "FREAK-Quently Asked Questions: Nate Silver", freakonomics.com, March 12, 2009 August 17, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ^ Kaiser, Rob (October 3, 2004). . Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on January 15, 2013. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  17. ^ Wolff, Alexander (September 17, 2012). . Sports Illustrated. p. 15. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2012..
  18. ^ Silver, Nate (June 28, 2006). "Lies, Damned Lies: We are Elo?". Baseball Prospectus. from the original on February 6, 2007. Silver, Nate (July 5, 2006). "Lies, Damned Lies: More on Elo". Baseball Prospectus. from the original on February 10, 2007.
  19. ^ Baseball Prospectus (ISBN 0-7611-3995-8)
  20. ^ Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning (New York: Workman Publishers, 2005) (ISBN 0-7611-4018-2)
  21. ^ Baseball Between the Numbers (New York: Basic Books, 2006) (ISBN 0-465-00596-9)
  22. ^ It Ain't Over 'til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book (New York: Basic Books, 2007) (ISBN 0-465-00284-6)
  23. ^ Nate Silver, "For Griffey, the Roads Not Taken", The New York Times, May 11, 2008 August 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine.
  24. ^ . Baseball Prospectus. Archived from the original on September 12, 2011. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
  25. ^ a b Silver, Nate; Goldstein, Kevin (March 24, 2009). . Baseball Prospectus. Archived from the original on March 27, 2009.
  26. ^ The first diary was titled, "HRC [Hillary Roddam Clinton] Electability in Purple States, DailyKos, November 1, 2007 October 28, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  27. ^ Hayes, Hannah (January 2009). . University of Chicago. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved June 6, 2011..
  28. ^ Kristol, William (February 11, 2008). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 29, 2016.
  29. ^ Silver, Nate (August 7, 2008). . FiveThirtyEight.com. Archived from the original on February 27, 2014. Retrieved November 4, 2008.
  30. ^ Nate Silver, "No I'm Not Chuck Todd", FiveThirtyEight.com, May 30, 2008 December 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  31. ^ Nate Silver, "Margins of Error", New York Post, June 1, 2008. September 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  32. ^ Nate Silver, "CNN Video", FiveThirtyEight.com, June 13, 2008 June 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  33. ^ a b Nate Silver, "Frequently Asked Questions, Last Revised 8/7/08", FiveThirtyEight.com February 27, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  34. ^ Jim Caple, "In baseball, and in politics, the numbers don't lie", "Page 2", Article on ESPN.com, November 7, 2008 December 22, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
  35. ^ Neyfakh, Leon (November 14, 2008). . New York Observer. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008.
  36. ^ See TED2009 program December 26, 2008, at the Wayback Machine and Shanna Carpenter, "Race and the City: An Exclusive Interview with Nate Silver", TED Blog, April 29, 2009 April 30, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  37. ^ Daniel Terdiman, "FiveThirtyEight.com's Nate Silver on life post-election February 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", CNET.com, March 15, 2009, and Dan Fost, "SXSW: Statistics guru Nate Silver talks Oscars, Manny Ramirez and President Obama March 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine", Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2009. See Video of SXSW Keynote Interview, part 1 February 1, 2017, at the Wayback Machine and part 2 February 1, 2017, at the Wayback Machine.
  38. ^ Silver, Nate. "The Data". Esquire. Archived from the original on July 29, 2012. Retrieved May 8, 2009.
  39. ^ Nate Silver and Andrew Gelman, "No Country for Close Calls", The New York Times, April 18, 2009 August 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine.
  40. ^ Nate Silver, "Crunching the Risk Numbers", The Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2010 November 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine.
  41. ^ a b Silver, Nate (July 2, 2009). "This Post Brought to You by Poker". FiveThirtyEight.com. from the original on November 26, 2012.
  42. ^ ESPN's SPi January 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  43. ^ Nate Silver, "The Purpose of the Soccer Power Index", ESPN.com, November 11, 2009 November 14, 2009, at the Wayback Machine and Nate Silver, "A Guide to ESPN's SPI Ratings", ESPN.com, November 11, 2009 November 19, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. For a comment see Carl Bialik, "ESPN's New Soccer Rankings", The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2009 March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  44. ^ Nate Silver, "SPI in review: How did it do?", ESPN.com, July 19, 2010 January 28, 2012, at the Wayback Machine [Retrieved July 21, 2010].
  45. ^ Silver, Nate (April 11, 2010). "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York: a quantitative index of the 50 most satisfying places to live". New York. from the original on September 21, 2012..
  46. ^ Nate Silver, "FiveThirtyEight to Partner with New York Times", FiveThirtyEight.com, June 3, 2010 June 6, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  47. ^ Tenore, Mallory Jean (June 3, 2011). . Poynter. Archived from the original on February 25, 2011.
  48. ^ Sullivan, Margaret (September 21, 2012). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 24, 2012.
  49. ^ Silver, Nate (August 25, 2010). . FiveThirtyEight / The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 13, 2014.
  50. ^ Silver, Nate (November 19, 2010). . The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on August 2, 2017.
  51. ^ Silver, Nate (March 17, 2011). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 17, 2017.
  52. ^ Zengerle, Jason (September 30, 2012). . New York Magazine. Archived from the original on October 1, 2012.
  53. ^ Tracy, Marc (November 6, 2012). "Nate Silver Is a One-Man Traffic Machine for the Times". The New Republic. from the original on February 28, 2021. Retrieved March 23, 2021.
  54. ^ "Skew Yourselves: Nate Silver Is Here To Answer Your Questions", Article at Deadspin, November 14, 2012 November 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  55. ^ Alex Weprin, "The New York Times Wants To Keep Nate Silver, 'Expand On What He Does'", Mediabistro, November 27, 2012 November 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Also see Connor Simpson, "What the Future Holds for Nate Silver at The New York Times", Atlantic Wire, November 27, 2012 November 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  56. ^ "Nate Silver makes move to ESPN", ESPN.com, July 22, 2013 July 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine; "Nate Silver – Renowned Statistician, Author and Founder of FiveThirtyEight – Joins ESPN in Multi-Faceted Role", ESPN Front Row, July 22, 2013 July 25, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  57. ^ Sullivan, Margaret (July 22, 2013). "Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times". The New York Times. from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved July 23, 2013.
  58. ^ On the culture clash within The Times, also see John M. Sides, "One Irony of Nate Silver's Leaving the New York Times", Washington Monthly, July 24, 2013 November 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine; and Jim Naureckas, "Nate Silver Didn't Fit In at the New York Times Because He Believed in the Real World", FAIR, July 24, 2013 July 28, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  59. ^ Although she linked to her "Nate Silver Went Against the Grain" article, Sullivan did not specify in what ways she had been off-base. See Margaret Sullivan, "A Year in the Life of a Watchdog", The New York Times, September 1, 2013.
  60. ^ Hagan, Joe (August 23, 2013). . New York Magazine. Archived from the original on August 23, 2013.
  61. ^ Silver, Nate (March 17, 2014). . FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on March 17, 2014..
  62. ^ See, most notably, Mark Blumenthal, "The Poblano Model", Article in National Journal, May 8, 2008 April 14, 2009, at the Wayback Machine.
  63. ^ Sean Redmond, "Numerical Order: Famed Statistician Nate Silver Discusses the Future of His Near-Flawless Forecasts", Article in Chicago Weekly, January 9, 2009 September 27, 2010, at the Wayback Machine . On this point see also Silver's discussion in Megan Garber, "Talking Shop: Nate Silver", Columbia Journalism Review, November 11, 2008 November 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  64. ^ Stephanie Condon, "Q & A: The Formula Behind FiveThirtyEight", CNET News, November 3, 2008 December 16, 2019, at the Wayback Machine.
  65. ^ Editorial, "In Praise of ... Nate Silver", The Guardian, November 6, 2008 November 21, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  66. ^ Stephanie Clifford, "Finding Fame With a Prescient Call for Obama", The New York Times, November 10, 2008 August 21, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.
  67. ^ Issenberg, Sasha (2012). The Victory Lab. Crown Publishing Group. p. 290. ISBN 978-0307954794.
  68. ^ BuzzFeed Politics (September 5, 2012). ""Obama Campaign Shared '08 Polling With Silver" BuzzFeed, September 5, 2012". Buzzfeed.com. from the original on October 26, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  69. ^ Micah Cohen, "38 Days Later", The New York Times, December 10, 2010 October 11, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  70. ^ Nate Silver, "Is Obama Toast? Handicapping the 2012 Election", The New York Times Magazine, November 6, 2011 February 27, 2017, at the Wayback Machine.
  71. ^ Nate Silver, "Choose Obama's Re-Election Adventure", The New York Times, November 3, 2011 September 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  72. ^ Cohen, Micah (November 19, 2011). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 9, 2015.
  73. ^ Nate Silver, "Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent", The New York Times Magazine, February 15, 2012 February 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  74. ^ Nate Silver, "The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama", The New York Times, February 15, 2012 September 6, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  75. ^ Nate Silver, "Election Forecast: Obama Begins With Tenuous Advantage", The New York Times, June 7, 2012 September 11, 2015, at the Wayback Machine.
  76. ^ Silver, Nate. "FiveThirtyEight/NYT blog". Fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com. from the original on April 25, 2015. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  77. ^ Daniel Terdiman, "Obama's win a big vindication for Nate Silver, king of the quants November 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", CNET, November 6, 2012.
  78. ^ Although Silver put a "toss-up" tag on the presidential election in Florida, his interactive electoral map on the website painted the state light blue and stated that there was a 50.3% probability that Obama would win a plurality of the state's votes.
  79. ^ A fourth analyst, Sam Wang, missed only the State of Florida in his final presidential election forecast. See Sam Wang, "Presidential prediction 2012 – final", Princeton Election Connection, November 6, 2012 November 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  80. ^ Perry, John (November 8, 2012). "Emory professor called Electoral landslide in June". Atlanta Journal-Constitution. from the original on November 14, 2012.
  81. ^ Simon Jackman, "Pollster Predictive Performance, 51 out of 51", Article at Huffington Post, November 7, 2012 March 9, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  82. ^ Josh Putnam, "The Electoral College Map (11/6/12): Election Day", FHQ (FrontloadingHQ), November 6, 2012 November 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  83. ^ Swing states in the 2012 election were Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin
  84. ^ Jonathan D. Salant and Laura Curtis, "Nate Silver-led Statistics Men Crush Pundits in Election", Bloomberg Business Week November 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, November 7, 2012.
  85. ^ The reason for these misses might be found here: John Sides, "A Second Look at National Pollster Accuracy", The Monkey Cage, November 7, 2012. [retrieved Nov 8, 2012]. However, notably Public Policy Polling by itself correctly predicted the winner of every state November 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  86. ^ Stern, Mark Joseph; Kirk, Chris; Morgan, Andrew (November 7, 2012). "Slate's Pundit Scorecard: Pundits live to make predictions. Who nailed it? Who missed big?". from the original on September 21, 2013. Retrieved September 20, 2013.
  87. ^ Silver, Nate (November 8, 2016). "Final Election Update: There's A Wide Range Of Outcomes, And Most Of Them Come Up Clinton". FiveThirtyEight. from the original on November 9, 2016. Retrieved November 9, 2016.
  88. ^ a b Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else November 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine; FiveThirtyEight; Nate Silver; November 11, 2016
  89. ^ Allen, Kate (November 9, 2016). "Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight proves its worth with another close election prediction". Toronto Star. from the original on November 9, 2016. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
  90. ^ Nate Silver Is Unskewing Polls — All Of Them — In Trump's Direction November 14, 2016, at the Wayback Machine; Huffington Post; Ryan Grim; November 5, 2016
  91. ^ Silver, Nate (August 12, 2020). "2020 Election Forecast". FiveThirtyEight. from the original on August 14, 2020. Retrieved June 21, 2022.
  92. ^ Cosh, Colby (January 19, 2010). "Mr. Overrated". Macleans. from the original on November 6, 2012. Retrieved November 6, 2012.
  93. ^ Dunn, Geoffrey (September 7, 2012). "FiveThirtyHate?: Nate Silver Gets His Numbers Crossed in Charlotte". Huffington Post. from the original on October 12, 2012. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
  94. ^ Gregory Ferenstein, "Why Pundits and Politicians Hate NYT Election Forecaster Nate Silver November 17, 2017, at the Wayback Machine", TechCrunch, October 30, 2012.
  95. ^ Nate Silver, "Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly", FiveThirtyEight, November 4, 2010 November 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  96. ^ Jordan, Josh (October 22, 2012). "Nate Silver's Flawed Model". National Review. from the original on November 2, 2012. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
  97. ^ Sullivan, Margaret (November 1, 2012). "Under Attack, Nate Silver Picks the Wrong Defense". The New York Times. from the original on November 2, 2012. Retrieved November 3, 2012.. For a critical comment see Andrew Beaujon, "New York Times wants to hold Nate Silver to newsroom standards", Poynter, November 2, 2012 November 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  98. ^ Cassidy, John (October 24, 2012). . The New Yorker. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012.
  99. ^ Scarborough, Joe (November 21, 2012). . Politico. Archived from the original on November 23, 2012.
  100. ^ Klein, Ezra (October 30, 2012). "The Nate Silver backlash". The Washington Post. from the original on November 30, 2016. Retrieved November 3, 2012.
  101. ^ "Nate Silver and the Trials of a Forecaster", ThreeHundredEight.com, November 6, 2012 November 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  102. ^ Cowles, Gregory. "New York Times Best Sellers List". The New York Times. from the original on December 5, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  103. ^ Notte, Jason (November 8, 2012). . MSN Money. Archived from the original on January 15, 2013.
  104. ^ Scheiber, Noam (November 2, 2012). "Known Unknowns: The Signal and the Noise, by Nate Silver". The New York Times. from the original on October 6, 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2016.
  105. ^ Carl Bialik, "Baseball Analyst Draws Fans by Crunching Election Numbers", The Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2008 June 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  106. ^ Andrew Romano, "Making His Pitches: Nate Silver, an all-star in the world of baseball stats, may be the political arena's next big draw", Article in Newsweek, June 16, 2008 June 19, 2008, at the Wayback Machine,
  107. ^ Julie Rehmeyer, "Scooping the Political Pollsters", Article in Science News, July 11, 2008 July 16, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  108. ^ Adam Sternbergh, "The Spreadsheet Psychic", Article in New York Magazine, October 12, 2008 October 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  109. ^ Derek Wallbank, "E. L. native's predictions pitch politics a curveball: Applying baseball stats analysis creates buzz around 30-year-old", Lansing State Journal, July 5, 2008. Also highlighting Silver's dual skills at baseball and political analysis were Alex Altman, "Q & A: Political Pollster Nate Silver", in Time, October 6, 2008, Joe Lemire, "The Sports-Politics Connection: FiveThirtyEight", Sports Illustrated, October 13, 2008 October 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, James Janega, "Odds are, he knows the score – Chicago statistician Nate Silver has turned from sports to politics, with striking results", Chicago Tribune, October 27, 2008 October 28, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Ben Heller, "The 2008 Sports Nerd of the Year: Nate Silver[permanent dead link]", CBSSports.com, November 7, 2008. and Childs Walker, "Projecting politics & baseball with Nate Silver April 11, 2009, at the Wayback Machine", Baltimore Sun, April 8, 2009.
  110. ^ The first such posting was Nate Silver, "Today's Polls: The Bounce Hits the Badger State", The New Republic, June 12, 2008 June 14, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  111. ^ "Rasmussen Reports to Partner with FiveThirtyEight.com", Democratic Underground, June 14, 2008. January 16, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
  112. ^ For example, "Poll watchers waiting for Iowans to settle". The Rachel Maddow Show. December 28, 2011. Archived from the original on July 21, 2012 – via Bing Videos, as well as . January 2, 2012. Archived from the original on April 19, 2012.
  113. ^ For example, Howard, Kurtz (September 25, 2011). "Nate Silver interview Part 1". Reliable Sources. CNN Politics; "Interview Part 2". Reliable Sources. CNN Politics. September 25, 2011.
  114. ^ Video of Nate Silver on Bloomberg, March 8, 2010: bizbuzz3 (November 3, 2008). "Nate Silver". Youtube. from the original on February 18, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
  115. ^ "Nate Silver: Why Gun Rights Rhetoric Is Winning", December 17, 2012 November 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  116. ^ "Need to Know: Nate Silver on Why Polls Don't Always Add Up". Pbs.org. October 15, 2010. from the original on March 8, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
  117. ^ What's the Impact of the Debt Debate, August 2, 2011 August 27, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.
  118. ^ Democracy Now 5-18-2010 May 21, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  119. ^ e.g., January 23, 2012 January 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  120. ^ ABC "Topline", 9–28, 2010 October 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  121. ^ For example, on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" on February 14, 2012 February 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  122. ^ Nate Silver on "Colbert Report" 2008 December 18, 2008, at the Wayback Machine and Nate Silver on "Colbert Report" 2012 November 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  123. ^ Nate Silver on "The Daily Show" October 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  124. ^ "Real Time with Bill Maher". Hbo.com. from the original on December 14, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  125. ^ Nick Stango, "Top 25 Nate Silver Facts August 1, 2017, at the Wayback Machine", Gizmodo, November 7, 2012.
  126. ^ Chris Taylor, "The Triumph of the Nerds November 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", Mashable, November 7, 2012; Jocelyn Noveck, "He called it, and now Silver's a pop-culture star", Associated Press, November 9, 2012 August 4, 2020, at the Wayback Machine; Martin Robbins, "Can Nate Silver's example save political journalism?" The Guardian, November 13, 2012; Ken Bensinger, "Number crunchers were right about Obama despite what pundits said November 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2012; James Rainey, "Parsing polls: Nate Silver picks on target, Rasmussen not so much November 9, 2012, at the Wayback Machine", Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2012; Ron Seely, "Seely on Science: Nate Silver gains fame by harnessing power of math June 23, 2018, at the Wayback Machine", Wisconsin State Journal, November 9, 2012; Greg Sargent, "What Nate Silver Really Accomplished August 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine", The Washington Post, November 21, 2012; Aluf Benn, "After 2012, make way for the digital press", Haaretz, December 29, 2012.
  127. ^ Conor Friedersdorf, "How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File", The Atlantic, November 7, 2012 January 20, 2017, at the Wayback Machine; Frank Rich, "Fantasyland: Denial has poisoned the GOP and threatens the rest of the country too", New York, November 9, 2012 November 12, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  128. ^ Tarun Wadhwa, "Nate Silver and the Rise of Political Data Science", Forbes, November 7, 2012 August 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine; Dorie Clark, "How Nate Silver Won the 2012 Presidential Election", Harvard Business Review, November 7, 2012 November 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; Steve LeVine, "The smart guesswork that applies even in Nate Silver's world", Quartz, November 11, 2012 November 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; Joe Weisenthal, "Here's The Real Reason Nate Silver's Perfect Election Call Was Such An Awesome Breakthrough", Business Insider, November 10, 2012 November 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; Irving Wladawsky-Berger, "Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight Prove Predictive Analytics Getting Real", The Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2012 June 23, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.
  129. ^ Eric Lundquist, "Nate Silver's Big Data Lessons For The Enterprise", Information Week, November 8, 2012 November 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; Daniel Terdiman, "Among the top election quants, Nate Silver reigns supreme", CNET, November 8, 2012 November 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  130. ^ Kelly McBride, "What Nate Silver's success says about the 4th and 5th estates", Poynter, November 8, 2012 November 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; Jonathan Stray, "Data, uncertainty, and specialization: What journalism can learn from FiveThirtyEight's election coverage", Nieman Journalism Lab, October 31, 2012 November 7, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  131. ^ Jennifer Ouellette, "Why Math is Like the Honey Badger: Nate Silver", Scientific American, November 7, 2012 November 8, 2012, at the Wayback Machine; and Bora Zivkovic, "Nate Silver and the Ascendance of Expertise", Scientific American, November 14, 2012 November 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  132. ^ , November 9, 2012.
  133. ^ "Silver on Daily Show, Nov. 7, 2012". Thedailyshow.com. from the original on December 31, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  134. ^ Morning Joe January 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine on November 20, 2012.
  135. ^ "ABC News "This Week"". Abcnews.go.com. from the original on December 9, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  136. ^ "The Magicians Season 2 Episode 10 Review: The Girl Who Told Time". Den of Geek.[permanent dead link]
  137. ^ Wemple, Erik (November 9, 2015). "Nate Silver accuses Vox of recycling Wikipedia entries". The Washington Post. from the original on March 12, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  138. ^ Ripon 2013 video May 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine of Ripon College honorary degree award and commencement speech.
  139. ^ New School 2013 commencement video February 3, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.
  140. ^ . Pbk.org. October 8, 2013. Archived from the original on October 24, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2013.
  141. ^ "Honorary Doctorate for Nate Silver", LStat: Leuven Statistics Research Centre Archived December 4, 2013, at archive.today
  142. ^ Luc Vander Elst, "Honorary doctorate for Nate Silver, the man who made statistics cool", KU Leuven, December 18, 2013 December 24, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  143. ^ Honorary doctorate from Amherst, 2014 May 27, 2014, at the Wayback Machine.
  144. ^ . masslive.com. Archived from the original on May 27, 2014. Retrieved May 26, 2014.
  145. ^ "Georgetown Announces 2017 Commencement Speakers" May 17, 2017, at the Wayback Machine.
  146. ^ Kenyon College honorary degree May 20, 2018, at the Wayback Machine.
  147. ^ Bloom, Nate (November 13, 2012). . InterfaithFamily. Archived from the original on November 21, 2012. His mother is the granddaughter of the late Harmon Lewis, once head of the Alcoa Steamship Company. Silver's middle name is also the first name of a maternal great-aunt and the middle name of his mother's sister.
  148. ^ Carole Cadwalladr, "Nate Silver: it's the numbers, stupid", Article in The Guardian, November 17, 2012 November 21, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  149. ^ a b Carole Cadwalladr, "Nate Silver: it's the numbers, stupid", Article in The Observer, November 17, 2012 November 21, 2016, at the Wayback Machine.
  150. ^ Japhy Grant, "Nate Silver on African-Americans, Prop 8. and Being A Hero to Gays & Geeks Everywhere", Queerty, November 21, 2008 November 15, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. [retrieved November 6, 2012]
  151. ^ Change Doesn't Usually Come This Fast June 28, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, June 26, 2015, accessed June 29, 2015
  152. ^ "Scoresheet Fantasy Baseball Overview | The best fantasy baseball sim game". www.scoresheet.com. from the original on July 26, 2017. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
  153. ^ Zak Stambor, "Number Cruncher", University of Chicago Magazine, July–August, 2008 July 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  154. ^ "BurritoBracket.com". Burritobracket.blogspot.com. February 23, 2004. from the original on January 14, 2013. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
  155. ^ On the role of The Burrito Bracket in Silver's engagement in blogging see Dan Cohen, "The Ivory Tower and the Open Web: Introduction: Burritos, Browsers and Books", Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities blog, July 26, 2011 August 10, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. [retrieved August 6, 2011]
  156. ^ See Hageman, cited previously; Kaiser, Rob (October 3, 2004). "Players Place Bets on Poker as Career". Chicago Tribune. from the original on January 15, 2013. Retrieved July 2, 2009.
  157. ^ "Nate Silver's profile on The Hendon Mob". The Hendon Mob Poker Database. from the original on July 13, 2023. Retrieved December 30, 2023.
  158. ^ Silver, Nate (July 12, 2023). "Nate Silver Places 93rd in the 2023 WSOP Main Event". Twitter. from the original on July 13, 2023. Retrieved July 13, 2023.
  159. ^ Rose, Charlie (host) (October 29, 2012). . Charlie Rose. PBS. Archived from the original on September 26, 2013. Retrieved October 6, 2013.
  160. ^ Silver, Nate. "Not everyone who disagrees with you is a closet right-winger". Silver Bulletin. Substack. from the original on September 12, 2023. Retrieved September 13, 2023.

Further reading edit

  • Calderone, Michael (August 15, 2019). "Behind Nate Silver's war with The New York Times". Politico. Retrieved August 18, 2019.

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nate Silver.
 
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  • Nate Silver's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)

April 09, 2024
nate, silver, this, article, about, author, statistician, american, football, player, quarterback, american, filmmaker, nathan, silver, nathaniel, read, silver, born, january, 1978, american, statistician, writer, poker, player, analyzes, baseball, basketball,. This article is about the author and statistician For the American football player see Nate Silver quarterback For the American filmmaker see Nathan Silver Nathaniel Read Silver born January 13 1978 is an American statistician writer and poker player who analyzes baseball basketball and elections He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and held the position of editor in chief there along with being a special correspondent for ABC News until May 2023 2 Nate SilverSilver playing poker at Manifest 2023BornNathaniel Read Silver 1978 01 13 January 13 1978 age 46 1 East Lansing Michigan U S EducationUniversity of Chicago BA Occupation s Statistician journalistYears active2000 presentKnown forPECOTA FiveThirtyEightWebsitenatesilver substack comSilver was named one of the world s 100 most influential people by Time in 2009 after an election forecasting system he developed successfully predicted the outcomes in forty nine of the fifty states in the 2008 U S presidential election 3 His subsequent election forecasting systems predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with a high degree of accuracy His polls only model gave Donald Trump only a 28 6 chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election 4 but this was higher than many other forecasting competitors 5 Much of Silver s approach can be characterized by using probabilistic and statistical modeling to try to understand complex social systems such as professional sports the popularity of political platforms and elections Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Career 2 1 Economic consultant 2000 2004 2 2 Baseball analyst 2003 2008 2 2 1 PECOTA 3 Political analyst and blogger since 2008 3 1 FiveThirtyEight blog 3 1 1 Creation and motivation 3 1 2 2008 election and aftermath 3 1 3 Transition to The New York Times 3 1 4 Departure from The Times 3 1 5 FiveThirtyEight under Disney ownership 3 2 FiveThirtyEight s election forecasts 3 2 1 2008 U S elections 3 2 2 2010 U S elections 3 2 3 2012 U S elections 3 2 4 2016 U S elections 3 2 5 2020 U S elections 3 3 Reception 4 The Signal and the Noise 5 Blogs and other publications 6 Media 7 Selected recognition and awards 8 Personal life 8 1 Political views 9 See also 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksEarly life and education editSilver was born in East Lansing Michigan the son of Sally nee Thrun a community activist and Brian David Silver a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University 6 7 Silver s mother s family was of English and German descent His maternal great grandfather Harmon Lewis was president of the Alcoa Steamship Company Inc 8 Silver s father s family includes two uncles Leon Silver and Caswell Silver who were distinguished geologists Silver has described himself as half Jewish 8 9 Silver showed a proficiency in math from a young age 10 According to journalist William Hageman Silver caught the baseball bug when he was 6 It was 1984 the year the Detroit Tigers won the World Series The Tigers became his team and baseball his sport And if there s anything that goes hand in glove with baseball it s numbers another of Silver s childhood interests It s always more interesting to apply it to batting averages than algebra class 11 As a student at East Lansing High School Silver won first place in the State of Michigan in the 49th annual John S Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters in 1996 12 Silver first showed his journalism skills as a writer and opinion page editor for The Portrait East Lansing High School s student newspaper from 1993 1996 13 In 2000 Silver graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Chicago He also wrote for the Chicago Weekly News and the Chicago Maroon He spent his third year at the London School of Economics 14 Career editEconomic consultant 2000 2004 edit After college graduation in 2000 Silver worked for three and a half years as a transfer pricing consultant with KPMG in Chicago When asked in 2009 What is your biggest regret in life Silver responded Spending four years of my life at a job I didn t like 15 While employed at KPMG Silver continued to nurture his lifelong interest in baseball and statistics and on the side he began to work on his PECOTA system for projecting player performance and careers He quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker 16 According to Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff over a three year period Silver earned 400 000 from online poker 17 Baseball analyst 2003 2008 edit In 2003 Silver became a writer for Baseball Prospectus BP after having sold PECOTA to BP in return for a partnership interest After resigning from KPMG in 2004 he took the position of Executive Vice President later renamed Managing Partner of BP Silver further developed PECOTA and wrote a weekly column under the heading Lies Damned Lies He applied sabermetric techniques to a broad range of topics including forecasting the performance of individual players the economics of baseball metrics for the valuation of players and developing an Elo rating system for Major League baseball 18 Between 2003 and 2009 Silver co authored the Baseball Prospectus annual book of Major League Baseball forecasts 19 as well as other books including Mind Game How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart Won a World Series and Created a New Blueprint for Winning 20 Baseball Between the Numbers 21 and It Ain t Over til It s Over The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book 22 He contributed articles about baseball to ESPN com Sports Illustrated Slate the New York Sun and The New York Times 23 Silver wrote more than 200 articles for Baseball Prospectus 24 PECOTA edit Main article PECOTA PECOTA Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm is a statistical system that projects the future performance of hitters and pitchers It is designed primarily for two users fans interested in fantasy baseball and professionals in the baseball business trying to predict the performance and valuation of major league players Unlike most other baseball projection systems PECOTA relies on matching a given current player to a set of comparable players whose past performance can serve as a guide to how the given current player is likely to perform in the future Unlike most other such systems PECOTA also calculates a range of probable performance levels rather than a single predicted value on a given measure such as earned run average or batting average PECOTA projections were first published by Baseball Prospectus in the 2003 edition of its annual book as well as online by BaseballProspectus com Silver produced the PECOTA forecasts for each Major League Baseball season from 2003 through 2009 25 Political analyst and blogger since 2008 editFiveThirtyEight blog edit Main article FiveThirtyEight Creation and motivation edit nbsp Silver at SXSW in 2009On November 1 2007 while still employed by Baseball Prospectus Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym Poblano on the progressive political blog Daily Kos 26 Silver set out to analyze quantitative aspects of the political game to enlighten a broader audience Silver reports that he was stranded in a New Orleans airport when the idea of FiveThirtyEight com came to him I was just frustrated with the analysis I saw a lot of discussion about strategy that was not all that sophisticated especially when it came to quantitative things like polls and demographics 27 His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew a lot of attention including being cited by The New York Times op ed columnist William Kristol 28 On March 7 2008 while still writing as Poblano Silver established his own blog FiveThirtyEight com Often colloquially referred to as just 538 the website takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college 29 On May 30 2008 Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight com readers 30 On June 1 2008 Silver published a two page op ed in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics 31 He first appeared on national television on CNN s American Morning on June 13 2008 32 Silver described his partisan orientation as follows in the FAQ on his website My state Illinois has non partisan registration so I am not registered as anything I vote for Democratic candidates the majority of the time though by no means always This year I have been a supporter of Barack Obama 33 With respect to the impartiality of his electoral projections Silver stated Are my results biased toward my preferred candidates I hope not but that is for you to decide I have tried to disclose as much about my methodology as possible 33 2008 election and aftermath edit Shortly after the November 4 election ESPN writer Jim Caple observed Forget Cole Hamels and the Phillies No one in baseball had a more impressive fall than Nate Silver R ight now Silver is exhausted He barely slept the last couple weeks of the campaign By the end it was full time plus and for that matter he says he couldn t have kept it up had the campaign lasted two days longer Plus he has his Baseball Prospectus duties We write our Baseball Prospectus 2009 book from now through the first of the year Silver said I have a week to relax and then it gets just as busy again In February 2009 I will just have to find an island in the Caribbean and throw my BlackBerry in the ocean 34 Later in November 2008 Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books reportedly for a 700 000 advance 35 Silver was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009 36 and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest SXSW Interactive conference March 2009 37 While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight com website in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column The Data in Esquire 38 as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times 39 and The Wall Street Journal 40 He also tried his luck in the 2009 World Series of Poker 41 The success of his FiveThirtyEight com blog marked the effective end of Silver s career as baseball analyst though he continued to devote some attention to sports statistics and sports economics in his blog In March 2009 he stepped down as Managing Partner of Baseball Prospectus and handed over responsibility for producing future PECOTA projections to other Baseball Prospectus staff members 25 In April 2009 he appeared as an analyst on ESPN s Baseball Tonight After March 2009 he published only two Lies Damned Lies columns on BaseballProspectus com In November 2009 ESPN introduced a new Soccer Power Index SPi 42 designed by Nate Silver for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup 43 He published a post mortem after the tournament comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems 44 In April 2010 in an assignment for New York magazine Silver created a quantitative index of The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York 45 Transition to The New York Times edit On June 3 2010 Silver announced on FiveThirtyEight In the near future the blog will re launch under a NYTimes com domain It will retain its own identity akin to other Times blogs like DealBook but will be organized under the News Politics section Once this occurs content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight com on an ongoing basis and the blog will re direct to the new URL In addition I will be contributing content to the print edition of The New York Times and to the Sunday Magazine The partnership agreement which is structured as a license has a term of three years 46 47 48 The New York Times FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver s Political Calculus commenced on August 25 2010 with the publication of New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats 49 From that date the blog focused almost exclusively on forecasting the outcomes of the 2010 U S Senate and U S House of Representatives elections as well as state gubernatorial contests Silver s Times Sunday Magazine feature first appeared on November 19 2010 under the heading Go Figure 50 It was later titled Acts of Mild Subversion 51 While blogging for The Times Silver also worked on his book about prediction which was published in September 2012 At that time Silver began to drop hints that after 2012 he would turn his attention to matters other than detailed statistical forecasting of elections As reported in New York magazine I view my role now as providing more of a macro level skepticism rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil he says And in four years he might be even more macro as he turns his forecasting talents to other fields I m 97 percent sure that the FiveThirtyEight model will exist in 2016 he says but it could be someone else who s running it or licensing it 52 During the last year of FiveThirtyEight s license to The New York Times it drew a very large volume of online traffic to the paper The Times does not release traffic figures but a spokesperson said yesterday that Silver s blog provided a significant and significantly growing over the past year percentage of Times pageviews This fall visits to the Times political coverage including FiveThirtyEight have increased both absolutely and as a percentage of site visits But FiveThirtyEight s growth is staggering where earlier this year somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of politics visits included a stop at FiveThirtyEight last week that figure was 71 percent But Silver s blog has buoyed more than just the politics coverage becoming a significant traffic driver for the site as a whole Earlier this year approximately 1 percent of visits to the New York Times included FiveThirtyEight Last week that number was 13 percent Yesterday it was 20 percent That is one in five visitors to the sixth most trafficked U S news site took a look at Silver s blog 53 Departure from The Times edit source source source source source source source source Silver on leaving The New York TimesIn an online chat session a week after the 2012 election Silver commented As tempting as it might be to pull a Jim Brown Sandy Koufax and just mic drop retire from elections forecasting I expect that we ll be making forecasts in 2014 and 2016 Midterm elections can be dreadfully boring unfortunately But the 2016 G O P primary seems almost certain to be epic 54 In late November 2012 Times executive editor Jill Abramson declared her wish to keep Silver and his blog We would love to have Nate continue to be part of the New York Times family and to expand on what he does she said We know he began in sports anyway so it is not an exclusively political product I am excited to talk to Nate when he finishes his book tour about ways to expand that kind of reporting 55 On July 22 2013 ESPN a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company announced that it had acquired ownership of the FiveThirtyEight website and brand and that Silver will serve as editor in chief of the site and will build a team of journalists editors analysts and contributors in the coming months 56 The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote of Silver s decision to leave for ESPN I don t think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was aware of that He was in a word disruptive Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie Moneyball disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics 57 She added A number of traditional and well respected Times journalists disliked his work 58 Later Sullivan wrote in The Times that I don t feel so good about not being able to investigate every complaint from every individual reader fully or about making some misjudgments in individual posts my Nate Silver commentary among others has probably been off base 59 New York magazine reported that executive editor Jill Abramson put on a full court press to keep Silver at The Times and that for Abramson Silver was a tentpole attraction for her favorite subject national politics and brought the kind of buzz she thought valuable but the company s CEO and President Mark Thompson confirmed that keeping Silver was not at the top of his agenda The article stated that the major reason Silver left was because he felt it was Thompson who had not committed to building his franchise The mixed signals from Thompson and Abramson his lack of enthusiasm for committing resources to Silver her desire to keep a major star frustrated Silver and his lawyer 60 FiveThirtyEight under Disney ownership edit When FiveThirtyEight was relaunched under Disney s ESPN on March 17 2014 Silver outlined the scope of topics that would be covered under the rubric of data journalism 61 We ve expanded our staff from two full time journalists to 20 and counting Few of them will focus on politics exclusively instead our coverage will span five major subject areas politics economics science life and sports Our team also has a broad set of skills and experience in methods that fall under the rubric of data journalism These include statistical analysis but also data visualization computer programming and data literate reporting So in addition to written stories we ll have interactive graphics and features Within a couple of months we ll launch a podcast and we ll be collaborating with ESPN Films and Grantland to produce original documentary films In 2018 the Walt Disney Company transferred the FiveThirtyEight site from the ESPN division to the ABC News division In April 2023 amid widespread layoffs at Disney and ABC affecting FiveThirtyEight Silver announced that his contract with ABC would not be extended After Silver s departure in May a smaller FiveThirtyEight continues to operate under the data analytics division of ABC News 2 FiveThirtyEight s election forecasts edit 2008 U S elections edit Main article FiveThirtyEight In March 2008 Silver established his blog FiveThirtyEight com in which he developed a system for tracking polls and forecasting the outcome of the 2008 general election At the same time he continued making forecasts of the 2008 Democratic primary elections That several of his forecasts based on demographic analysis proved to be substantially more accurate than those of the professional pollsters gained visibility and professional credibility for Poblano the pseudonym that Silver was then using 62 After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6 the popularity of FiveThirtyEight com surged Silver recalls the scenario I know the polls show it s really tight in NC but we think Obama is going to win by thirteen fourteen points and he did Any time you make a prediction like that people give you probably too much credit for it But after that Silver s and the website s popularity started to really take off It s pretty nonlinear once you get one mention in the mainstream media other people quickly follow suit 63 As a CNET reporter wrote on election eve Even though Silver launched the site as recently as March its straightforward approach daring predictions and short but impressive track record has put it on the map of political sites to follow 64 Silver s final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia missing only the prediction for Indiana As his model predicted the races in Missouri and North Carolina were particularly close He also correctly predicted the winners of every U S Senate race The accuracy of his predictions won him further acclaim including abroad 65 and added to his reputation as a leading political prognosticator 66 Barack Obama s 2008 presidential campaign signed off on a proposal to share all of its private polling with Silver After signing a confidentiality agreement Silver was granted access to hundreds of polls the campaign had conducted 67 68 2010 U S elections edit Main article FiveThirtyEight 2010 U S mid term elections Shortly after FiveThirtyEight relocated to The New York Times Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the U S Senate the U S House of Representatives and state governorships Each of these models relied initially on a combination of electoral history demographics and polling Silver eventually published detailed forecasts and analyses of the results for all three sets of elections He correctly predicted the winner in 34 of the 37 contested Senate races His 2010 congressional mid term predictions were not as accurate as those made in 2008 but were still within the reported confidence interval Silver predicted a Republican pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives the GOP won 63 seats Of the 37 gubernatorial races FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner of 36 69 2012 U S elections edit Main article FiveThirtyEight 2012 U S elections Although throughout 2011 Silver devoted a lot of attention on his blog to the 2012 Republican party primaries his first effort to handicap the 2012 presidential general election appeared as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine a year prior to the election Is Obama Toast Handicapping the 2012 Election 70 Accompanying the online release of this article Silver also published Choose Obama s Re Election Adventure an interactive toy that allowed readers to predict the outcome of the election based on their assumptions about three variables President Obama s favorability ratings the rate of GDP growth and how conservative the Republican opponent would be 71 This analysis stimulated a lot of critical discussion 72 While publishing numerous stories on the Republican primary elections in mid February 2012 Silver reprised and updated his previous Magazine story with another one What Obama Should Do Next 73 This story painted a more optimistic picture of President Obama s re election chances A companion article on his FiveThirtyEight blog The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama explained how the model and the facts on the ground had changed between November and February 74 Silver published the first iteration of his 2012 general election forecasts on June 7 2012 According to the model at that time Barack Obama was projected to win 291 electoral votes 21 more than the 270 required for a majority Obama then had an estimated 61 8 chance of winning a majority 75 On the morning of the November 6 2012 presidential election the final update of Silver s model at 10 10 A M gave President Barack Obama a 90 9 chance of winning a majority of the 538 electoral votes 76 Both in summary tables and in an electoral map Silver forecast the winner of each state At the conclusion of that day when Mitt Romney had conceded to Barack Obama Silver s model had correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia 77 78 Silver along with at least three 79 academic based analysts Drew Linzer 80 Simon Jackman 81 and Josh Putnam 82 who also aggregated polls from multiple pollsters thus was not only broadly correct about the election outcome but also specifically predicted the outcomes for the nine swing states 83 In contrast individual pollsters were less successful For example Rasmussen Reports missed on six of its nine swing state polls 84 85 86 2016 U S elections edit Main article FiveThirtyEight 2016 U S elections In the week leading up to the 2016 U S presidential election the FiveThirtyEight team predicted that Hillary Clinton had a 64 5 chance of winning the election Their final prediction on November 8 2016 gave Clinton a 71 chance to win the 2016 United States presidential election 87 while other major forecasters had predicted Clinton to win with at least an 85 to 99 probability 88 89 Donald Trump won the election FiveThirtyEight argued it projected a much higher chance 29 of Donald Trump winning the presidency than other modelers 88 a projection which was criticized days before the election by Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post as unskewing too much in favor of Trump 90 2020 U S elections edit Main article FiveThirtyEight 2020 U S electionsIn their final prediction of the 2020 United States presidential election FiveThirtyEight predicted that Joe Biden had an 89 chance of winning the election 91 Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote FiveThirtyEight only missed Florida North Carolina and Maine s 2nd congressional district in their projections Donald Trump prevailed in each of these contests in which FiveThirtyEight forecasted the better chances for Biden to win Reception edit Silver has been criticized for inaccurate predictions In January 2010 journalist and blogger Colby Cosh criticized Silver s performance during the Massachusetts special Senate election saying he was still arguing as late as Thursday afternoon that Martha Coakley was the clear favourite he changed his mind at midnight that evening and acknowledged that Scott Brown had a puncher s chance Brown won the election 92 Silver s quantitative focus on polling data without insight from experience in political organizing or journalism has been a recurring critique from experienced commentators Huffington Post columnist Geoffrey Dunn described Silver as someone who has never organized a precinct in his life much less walked one pontificating about the dynamics in the electoral processes as if he actually understood them 93 Considerable criticism during the 2012 elections came from political conservatives who argued that Silver s election projections were politically biased against Mitt Romney the Republican candidate for president 94 For example Silver was accused of applying a double standard to his treatment of Rasmussen Reports polls such as a 2010 analysis asserting a statistical bias in its methodology 95 Josh Jordan wrote in National Review that Silver clearly favored Obama and adjusted the weight he gave polls based on what he think s of the pollster and the results and not based on what is actually inside the poll 96 On MSNBC s Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough stated that Silver s prediction that day of a 73 6 chance of a win for Obama greatly exceeded the confidence of the Obama campaign itself which Scarborough equated to that of the Romney campaign both believing they have a 50 1 percent chance of winning and calling Silver an ideologue and a joke Silver responded with the offer of a 1 000 wager for charity over the outcome of the election The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan while defending Silver s analysis characterized the wager as a bad idea as it gave the appearance of a partisan motive for Silver and inappropriate for someone perceived as a Times journalist although Silver was not a member of the newspaper s staff 97 98 After a post election appearance by Silver on Joe Scarborough s Morning Joe Scarborough published what he called a semi apology in which he concluded I won t apologize to Mr Silver for predicting an outcome that I had also been predicting for a year But I do need to tell Nate I m sorry for leaning in too hard and lumping him with pollsters whose methodology is as rigorous as the Simpsons strip mall physician Dr Nick For those sins and a multitude of others that I m sure I don t even know about I am sorry Politics is a messy sport And just as ball players who drink beer and eat fried chicken in dugouts across America can screw up the smartest sabermetrician s forecast Nate Silver s formula is sure to let his fervent admirers down from time to time But judging from what I saw of him this morning Nate is a grounded guy who admits as much in his book I was too tough on him and there s a 84 398264 chance I will be less dismissive of his good work in the future 99 Silver s nondisclosure of the details of his analytical model has resulted in some skepticism Washington Post journalist Ezra Klein wrote There are good criticisms to make of Silver s model not the least of which is that while Silver is almost tediously detailed about what s going on in the model he won t give out the code and without the code we can t say with certainty how the model works 100 Colby Cosh wrote that the model is proprietary and irreproducible That last feature makes it unwise to use Silver s model as a straw stand in for science as if the model had been fully specified in a peer reviewed journal 101 The Signal and the Noise editMain article The Signal and the Noise nbsp Silver signing a copy of The Signal and the Noise at SXSW 2013The Signal and The Noise was published in the United States on September 27 2012 It reached the New York Times Best Sellers List as 12 for non fiction hardback books after its first week in print It dropped to 20 in the second week before rising to 13 in the third and remaining on the non fiction hardback top 15 list for the following 13 weeks with a highest weekly ranking of 4 102 Sales increased after the election on November 6 jumping 800 and becoming the second best seller on Amazon com 103 The book describes methods of mathematical model building using probability and statistics Silver takes a big picture approach to using statistical tools combining sources of unique data e g timing a minor league ball player s fastball using a radar gun with historical data and principles of sound statistical analysis Silver argues that many of these are violated by many pollsters and pundits who nonetheless have important media roles Case studies in the book include baseball elections climate change the financial crash poker and weather forecasting These different topics illustrate different statistical principles As a reviewer in The New York Times notes It s largely about evaluating predictions in a variety of fields from finance to weather to epidemiology We learn about a handful of successes when for instance meteorologists predict a hurricane s landfall 72 hours in advance But mostly we learn about failures It turns out we re not even close to predicting the next catastrophic earthquake or the spread of the next killer bird flu despite the enormous amounts of brainpower trained on these questions in the past few decades 104 Blogs and other publications editBlogsFiveThirtyEight blog now owned by ABC Nate Silver s Baseball Prospectus article archive 2003 2009 Nate Silver s The Burrito Bracket 2007 Other publicationsNate Silver The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York A Quantitative Index of the 50 Most Satisfying Places to Live New York April 11 2010 Nate Silver The Influence Index Time April 29 2010 Nate Silver and Walter Hickey Best Picture Math Vanity Fair March 2014 Gareth Cook Editor Nate Silver Introduction The Best American Infographics 2014 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN 978 0547974514 Review of two children s books with an autobiographical comment Beautiful Minds The Boy Who Loved Math and On a Beam of Light The New York Times July 12 2013 Andrew Gelman Nate Silver Aaron S Edlin What Is the Probability Your Vote Will Make a Difference Economic Inquiry 2012 50 2 321 26 In addition to chapters in several issues of the Baseball Prospectus annual Silver contributed chapters to one off monographs edited by Baseball Prospectus including Mind Game How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart Won a World Series and Created a New Blueprint for Winning Steven Goldman Ed New York Workman Publishing Co 2005 ISBN 0 7611 4018 2 Baseball Between the Numbers Why Everything You Know about the Game Is Wrong Jonah Keri Ed New York Basic Books 2006 ISBN 0 465 00596 9 hardback and ISBN 0 465 00547 0 paperback It Ain t over til It s over The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book Steven Goldman Ed New York Basic Books Hardback 2007 ISBN 0 465 00284 6 paperback 2008 ISBN 0 465 00285 4 Media editSilver s self unmasking at the end of May 2008 brought him a lot of publicity focused on his combined skill as both baseball statistician forecaster and political statistician forecaster including articles about him in The Wall Street Journal 105 Newsweek 106 Science News 107 108 and his hometown Lansing State Journal 109 In early June he began to cross post his daily Today s Polls updates on The Plank in The New Republic 110 Also Rasmussen Reports began to use the FiveThirtyEight com poll averages for its own tracking of the 2008 state by state races 111 In 2009 through 2012 Silver appeared as a political analyst on MSNBC 112 CNN 113 and Bloomberg Television 114 115 PBS 116 NPR 117 Democracy Now 118 The Charlie Rose Show 119 ABC News 120 and Current TV 121 Silver also appeared on The Colbert Report October 7 2008 and November 5 2012 122 The Daily Show October 17 2012 and November 7 2012 123 and Real Time with Bill Maher October 26 2012 124 That Silver accurately predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential race in the face of numerous public attacks on his forecasts by critics inspired many articles in the press ranging from Gizmodo 125 to online and mainstream newspapers 126 news and commentary magazines 127 business media 128 trade journals 129 media about media 130 and Scientific American 131 as well as a feature interview on The Today Show 132 a return appearance on The Daily Show 133 and an appearance on Morning Joe 134 Silver s first appearance on ABC News as Editor in Chief of the new FiveThirtyEight com was on George Stephanopoulos s This Week on November 3 2013 135 Silver is referenced in the Syfy channel show The Magicians as an earth wizard who uses polling spells 136 In 2015 Silver appeared on the podcast Employee of the Month where he criticized Vox Media for recycling Wikipedia entries in their content 137 Selected recognition and awards editApril 30 2009 Silver was named one of The World s 100 Most Influential People by TIME magazine 3 May 12 2013 Silver received an honorary Doctor of Science degree Scientiae Doctor honoris causa D Sc h c and gave the commencement address at Ripon College 138 May 24 2013 Silver received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree Doctor of Literature honoris causa and presented a commencement address at The New School 139 October 2013 Silver s The Signal and the Noise won the 2013 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science which recognizes outstanding contributions by scientists to the literature of science 140 December 2013 The University of Leuven KU Leuven Belgium and the Leuven Statistics Research Centre awarded Silver an honorary doctoral degree for his prominent role in the development application and dissemination of proper prediction methods in sports and in political sciences 141 142 May 25 2014 Silver received a Doctorate of Humane Letters honoris causa from Amherst College 143 144 May 2017 Georgetown University awarded Silver a degree of Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa 145 May 2018 Kenyon College awarded Silver a degree Doctor of Humane Letters 146 Personal life editSilver is a great nephew of geologists Caswell Silver and Leon Silver He is a great grandson of Harmon Lewis the President of Alcoa Steamship Company 147 as well as a great great nephew of the embryologist Warren Harmon Lewis and his wife biologist Margaret Reed Lewis citation needed Silver is gay 148 I ve always felt like something of an outsider I ve always had friends but I ve always come from an outside point of view I think that s important If you grow up gay or in a household that s agnostic when most people are religious then from the get go you are saying there are things that the majority of society believes that I don t believe he told an interviewer in 2012 149 When asked what made you feel more of a misfit being gay or being a geek he replied Probably the numbers stuff since I had that from when I was six 149 When asked in 2008 if he had noticed people looking at him as a gay icon he responded I ve started to notice it a little bit although so far it seems like I m more a subject of geek affection than gay affection 150 Silver discussed his sexuality in the context of growing up in East Lansing in an article about the Supreme Court ruling Obergefell v Hodges in favor of recognizing same sex marriage on the date of its announcement He analyzed the speed of the change of public sentiment pointing out that the change over only several decades has been palpable to the current generations 151 Silver has long been interested in fantasy baseball especially Scoresheet Baseball 152 While in college he served as an expert on Scoresheet Baseball for BaseballHQ 153 When he took up political writing Silver abandoned his blog The Burrito Bracket 154 in which he ran a one and done competition among the taquerias in his Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago 155 Silver plays poker semi professionally 156 41 He has 811 142 in total tournament earnings including an 87th place finish in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event 157 158 Political views edit In a 2012 interview with Charlie Rose Silver said I d say I m somewhere in between being a libertarian and a liberal So if I were to vote it would be kind of a Gary Johnson versus Mitt Romney decision I suppose 159 In a 2023 newsletter Silver said that he misspoke during that interview and meant to say that he would have chosen between Johnson and Barack Obama He added that he has voted Democratic in every presidential election he voted in though he voted for John Kasich in the 2016 New York Republican presidential primary as he believed the difference between a Kasich led GOP and a Trump led GOP would make a large difference to the future of the country Silver also criticized the progressive political class believing that it had become more left and less liberal 160 See also edit nbsp Baseball portal nbsp Politics portal nbsp Mathematics portal nbsp Journalism portal nbsp Biography portal nbsp LGBT portalComputational statistics Editorial board LGBT culture in New York City List of LGBT people from New York City New Yorkers in journalism Political analysis Sports bettingReferences edit Nate Silver tweet Twitter com August 13 2010 Archived from the original on February 20 2012 Retrieved August 21 2012 a b Stieb Matt May 19 2023 A Brutal Wonk Swap at FiveThirtyEight Intelligencer Archived from the original on June 2 2023 Retrieved August 6 2023 a b Stein Joel The World s Most Influential People The 2009 TIME 100 TIME Archived from the original on May 8 2009 Retrieved May 8 2009 Silver Nate June 29 2016 2016 Election Forecast FiveThirtyEight Retrieved November 7 2023 Katz Josh November 8 2016 Who Will Be President The New York Times Archived from the original on October 21 2021 Wallbank Lansing State Journal Pqasb pqarchiver com July 5 2008 Archived from the original on July 25 2012 Retrieved August 21 2012 Silver Nate September 27 2012 The Signal and the Noise Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Don t Penguin ISBN 978 1 101 59595 4 Archived from the original on June 29 2016 The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves We speak for them We imbue them with meaning a b Bloom Nate Interfaith Celebrities Nate Silver Another Bond and Happy Endings InterfaithFamily Archived from the original on August 27 2014 Retrieved December 5 2013 This source also gives the origin of Silver s middle name Read which was shared by his mother s mother and sister Silver has a namesake Nathaniel Read in the family line that dates from the early 18th century Answer This Nate Silver Patrick Gavin Politico Com October 5 2012 Archived from the original on March 29 2014 Retrieved December 5 2013 Clifford Stephanie November 9 2008 Finding Fame With a Prescient Call for Obama The New York Times Archived from the original on February 24 2015 Hageman William January 4 2006 Baseball by the Numbers Chicago Tribune Archived from the original on April 5 2023 Retrieved March 23 2021 East Lansing Debater Wins Scholarship Detroit Free Press February 29 1996 Also see Patricia Montemurri Michigan native Nate Silver shows election predictions aren t magic but math Detroit Free Press November 11 2012 Archived September 24 2015 at the Wayback Machine Swasko Mick November 8 2012 Drunk Nate Silver Here s a yearbook photo before he could drink Archived from the original on November 8 2012 Retrieved November 8 2012 Silver Nate May 25 2009 Random Pretentious Observations from Europe FiveThirtyEight Archived from the original on May 28 2009 Stephen J Dubner FREAK Quently Asked Questions Nate Silver freakonomics com March 12 2009 Archived August 17 2018 at the Wayback Machine Kaiser Rob October 3 2004 Players Place Bets on Poker as Career Chicago Tribune Archived from the original on January 15 2013 Retrieved January 15 2013 Wolff Alexander September 17 2012 Scorecard He s So Predictable Sports Illustrated p 15 Archived from the original on October 26 2012 Retrieved October 26 2012 Silver Nate June 28 2006 Lies Damned Lies We are Elo Baseball Prospectus Archived from the original on February 6 2007 Silver Nate July 5 2006 Lies Damned Lies More on Elo Baseball Prospectus Archived from the original on February 10 2007 Baseball Prospectus ISBN 0 7611 3995 8 Mind Game How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart Won a World Series and Created a New Blueprint for Winning New York Workman Publishers 2005 ISBN 0 7611 4018 2 Baseball Between the Numbers New York Basic Books 2006 ISBN 0 465 00596 9 It Ain t Over til It s Over The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book New York Basic Books 2007 ISBN 0 465 00284 6 Nate Silver For Griffey the Roads Not Taken The New York Times May 11 2008 Archived August 2 2017 at the Wayback Machine All Articles by Nate Silver Baseball Prospectus Archived from the original on September 12 2011 Retrieved October 26 2022 a b Silver Nate Goldstein Kevin March 24 2009 State of the Prospectus Spring 2009 Baseball Prospectus Archived from the original on March 27 2009 The first diary was titled HRC Hillary Roddam Clinton Electability in Purple States DailyKos November 1 2007 Archived October 28 2012 at the Wayback Machine Hayes Hannah January 2009 What Will Nate Silver Do Next University of Chicago Archived from the original on June 6 2011 Retrieved June 6 2011 Kristol William February 11 2008 Obama s Path to Victory The New York Times Archived from the original on December 29 2016 Silver Nate August 7 2008 Frequently Asked Questions FiveThirtyEight com Archived from the original on February 27 2014 Retrieved November 4 2008 Nate Silver No I m Not Chuck Todd FiveThirtyEight com May 30 2008 Archived December 4 2008 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver Margins of Error New York Post June 1 2008 Archived September 10 2008 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver CNN Video FiveThirtyEight com June 13 2008 Archived June 16 2008 at the Wayback Machine a b Nate Silver Frequently Asked Questions Last Revised 8 7 08 FiveThirtyEight com Archived February 27 2014 at the Wayback Machine Jim Caple In baseball and in politics the numbers don t lie Page 2 Article on ESPN com November 7 2008 Archived December 22 2015 at the Wayback Machine Neyfakh Leon November 14 2008 Nate Silver Signs With Penguin In Two Book Deal Worth About 700 000 New York Observer Archived from the original on December 2 2008 See TED2009 program Archived December 26 2008 at the Wayback Machine and Shanna Carpenter Race and the City An Exclusive Interview with Nate Silver TED Blog April 29 2009 Archived April 30 2009 at the Wayback Machine Daniel Terdiman FiveThirtyEight com s Nate Silver on life post election Archived February 7 2012 at the Wayback Machine CNET com March 15 2009 and Dan Fost SXSW Statistics guru Nate Silver talks Oscars Manny Ramirez and President Obama Archived March 22 2009 at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times March 16 2009 See Video of SXSW Keynote Interview part 1 Archived February 1 2017 at the Wayback Machine and part 2 Archived February 1 2017 at the Wayback Machine Silver Nate The Data Esquire Archived from the original on July 29 2012 Retrieved May 8 2009 Nate Silver and Andrew Gelman No Country for Close Calls The New York Times April 18 2009 Archived August 2 2017 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver Crunching the Risk Numbers The Wall Street Journal January 8 2010 Archived November 24 2017 at the Wayback Machine a b Silver Nate July 2 2009 This Post Brought to You by Poker FiveThirtyEight com Archived from the original on November 26 2012 ESPN s SPi Archived January 21 2012 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver The Purpose of the Soccer Power Index ESPN com November 11 2009 Archived November 14 2009 at the Wayback Machine and Nate Silver A Guide to ESPN s SPI Ratings ESPN com November 11 2009 Archived November 19 2009 at the Wayback Machine For a comment see Carl Bialik ESPN s New Soccer Rankings The Wall Street Journal November 11 2009 Archived March 3 2016 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver SPI in review How did it do ESPN com July 19 2010 Archived January 28 2012 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 21 2010 Silver Nate April 11 2010 The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York a quantitative index of the 50 most satisfying places to live New York Archived from the original on September 21 2012 Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight to Partner with New York Times FiveThirtyEight com June 3 2010 Archived June 6 2010 at the Wayback Machine Tenore Mallory Jean June 3 2011 FiveThirtyEight s Nate Silver adjusts to New York Times 6 months after joining the newsroom Poynter Archived from the original on February 25 2011 Sullivan Margaret September 21 2012 On Identifying a Rape Victim Naming a Prophet and Nate Silver s Role The New York Times Archived from the original on September 24 2012 Silver Nate August 25 2010 New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats FiveThirtyEight The New York Times Archived from the original on December 13 2014 Silver Nate November 19 2010 Go Figure Who s No 1 The New York Times Magazine Archived from the original on August 2 2017 Silver Nate March 17 2011 How to Beat the Salad Bar The New York Times Archived from the original on January 17 2017 Zengerle Jason September 30 2012 The Polls Have Stopped Making Any Sense New York Magazine Archived from the original on October 1 2012 Tracy Marc November 6 2012 Nate Silver Is a One Man Traffic Machine for the Times The New Republic Archived from the original on February 28 2021 Retrieved March 23 2021 Skew Yourselves Nate Silver Is Here To Answer Your Questions Article at Deadspin November 14 2012 Archived November 17 2012 at the Wayback Machine Alex Weprin The New York Times Wants To Keep Nate Silver Expand On What He Does Mediabistro November 27 2012 Archived November 29 2012 at the Wayback Machine Also see Connor Simpson What the Future Holds for Nate Silver at The New York Times Atlantic Wire November 27 2012 Archived November 29 2012 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver makes move to ESPN ESPN com July 22 2013 Archived July 25 2013 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver Renowned Statistician Author and Founder of FiveThirtyEight Joins ESPN in Multi Faceted Role ESPN Front Row July 22 2013 Archived July 25 2013 at the Wayback Machine Sullivan Margaret July 22 2013 Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times The New York Times Archived from the original on October 18 2014 Retrieved July 23 2013 On the culture clash within The Times also see John M Sides One Irony of Nate Silver s Leaving the New York Times Washington Monthly July 24 2013 Archived November 5 2013 at the Wayback Machine and Jim Naureckas Nate Silver Didn t Fit In at the New York Times Because He Believed in the Real World FAIR July 24 2013 Archived July 28 2013 at the Wayback Machine Although she linked to her Nate Silver Went Against the Grain article Sullivan did not specify in what ways she had been off base See Margaret Sullivan A Year in the Life of a Watchdog The New York Times September 1 2013 Hagan Joe August 23 2013 The Suit in the Newsroom An unusual Times executive for unusual times New York Magazine Archived from the original on August 23 2013 Silver Nate March 17 2014 What the Fox Knows FiveThirtyEight Archived from the original on March 17 2014 See most notably Mark Blumenthal The Poblano Model Article in National Journal May 8 2008 Archived April 14 2009 at the Wayback Machine Sean Redmond Numerical Order Famed Statistician Nate Silver Discusses the Future of His Near Flawless Forecasts Article in Chicago Weekly January 9 2009 Archived September 27 2010 at the Wayback Machine On this point see also Silver s discussion in Megan Garber Talking Shop Nate Silver Columbia Journalism Review November 11 2008 Archived November 16 2008 at the Wayback Machine Stephanie Condon Q amp A The Formula Behind FiveThirtyEight CNET News November 3 2008 Archived December 16 2019 at the Wayback Machine Editorial In Praise of Nate Silver The Guardian November 6 2008 Archived November 21 2016 at the Wayback Machine Stephanie Clifford Finding Fame With a Prescient Call for Obama The New York Times November 10 2008 Archived August 21 2018 at the Wayback Machine Issenberg Sasha 2012 The Victory Lab Crown Publishing Group p 290 ISBN 978 0307954794 BuzzFeed Politics September 5 2012 Obama Campaign Shared 08 Polling With Silver BuzzFeed September 5 2012 Buzzfeed com Archived from the original on October 26 2013 Retrieved December 5 2013 Micah Cohen 38 Days Later The New York Times December 10 2010 Archived October 11 2014 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver Is Obama Toast Handicapping the 2012 Election The New York Times Magazine November 6 2011 Archived February 27 2017 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver Choose Obama s Re Election Adventure The New York Times November 3 2011 Archived September 10 2015 at the Wayback Machine Cohen Micah November 19 2011 Reads and Reactions The New York Times Archived from the original on October 9 2015 Nate Silver Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent The New York Times Magazine February 15 2012 Archived February 7 2012 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver The Fundamentals Now Favor Obama The New York Times February 15 2012 Archived September 6 2015 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver Election Forecast Obama Begins With Tenuous Advantage The New York Times June 7 2012 Archived September 11 2015 at the Wayback Machine Silver Nate FiveThirtyEight NYT blog Fivethirtyeight blogs nytimes com Archived from the original on April 25 2015 Retrieved December 5 2013 Daniel Terdiman Obama s win a big vindication for Nate Silver king of the quants Archived November 7 2012 at the Wayback Machine CNET November 6 2012 Although Silver put a toss up tag on the presidential election in Florida his interactive electoral map on the website painted the state light blue and stated that there was a 50 3 probability that Obama would win a plurality of the state s votes A fourth analyst Sam Wang missed only the State of Florida in his final presidential election forecast See Sam Wang Presidential prediction 2012 final Princeton Election Connection November 6 2012 Archived November 16 2012 at the Wayback Machine Perry John November 8 2012 Emory professor called Electoral landslide in June Atlanta Journal Constitution Archived from the original on November 14 2012 Simon Jackman Pollster Predictive Performance 51 out of 51 Article at Huffington Post November 7 2012 Archived March 9 2013 at the Wayback Machine Josh Putnam The Electoral College Map 11 6 12 Election Day FHQ FrontloadingHQ November 6 2012 Archived November 10 2012 at the Wayback Machine Swing states in the 2012 election were Colorado Florida Iowa Nevada New Hampshire North Carolina Ohio Virginia and Wisconsin Jonathan D Salant and Laura Curtis Nate Silver led Statistics Men Crush Pundits in Election Bloomberg Business Week Archived November 8 2012 at the Wayback Machine November 7 2012 The reason for these misses might be found here John Sides A Second Look at National Pollster Accuracy The Monkey Cage November 7 2012 retrieved Nov 8 2012 However notably Public Policy Polling by itself correctly predicted the winner of every state Archived November 9 2012 at the Wayback Machine Stern Mark Joseph Kirk Chris Morgan Andrew November 7 2012 Slate s Pundit Scorecard Pundits live to make predictions Who nailed it Who missed big Archived from the original on September 21 2013 Retrieved September 20 2013 Silver Nate November 8 2016 Final Election Update There s A Wide Range Of Outcomes And Most Of Them Come Up Clinton FiveThirtyEight Archived from the original on November 9 2016 Retrieved November 9 2016 a b Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else Archived November 14 2016 at the Wayback Machine FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver November 11 2016 Allen Kate November 9 2016 Nate Silver s FiveThirtyEight proves its worth with another close election prediction Toronto Star Archived from the original on November 9 2016 Retrieved November 10 2016 Nate Silver Is Unskewing Polls All Of Them In Trump s Direction Archived November 14 2016 at the Wayback Machine Huffington Post Ryan Grim November 5 2016 Silver Nate August 12 2020 2020 Election Forecast FiveThirtyEight Archived from the original on August 14 2020 Retrieved June 21 2022 Cosh Colby January 19 2010 Mr Overrated Macleans Archived from the original on November 6 2012 Retrieved November 6 2012 Dunn Geoffrey September 7 2012 FiveThirtyHate Nate Silver Gets His Numbers Crossed in Charlotte Huffington Post Archived from the original on October 12 2012 Retrieved November 3 2012 Gregory Ferenstein Why Pundits and Politicians Hate NYT Election Forecaster Nate Silver Archived November 17 2017 at the Wayback Machine TechCrunch October 30 2012 Nate Silver Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate Quinnipiac SurveyUSA Performed Strongly FiveThirtyEight November 4 2010 Archived November 8 2012 at the Wayback Machine Jordan Josh October 22 2012 Nate Silver s Flawed Model National Review Archived from the original on November 2 2012 Retrieved November 3 2012 Sullivan Margaret November 1 2012 Under Attack Nate Silver Picks the Wrong Defense The New York Times Archived from the original on November 2 2012 Retrieved November 3 2012 For a critical comment see Andrew Beaujon New York Times wants to hold Nate Silver to newsroom standards Poynter November 2 2012 Archived November 15 2012 at the Wayback Machine Cassidy John October 24 2012 Brooks vs Silver The Limits of Forecasting Elections The New Yorker Archived from the original on November 14 2012 Scarborough Joe November 21 2012 My Semi Apology to Nate Silver Politico Archived from the original on November 23 2012 Klein Ezra October 30 2012 The Nate Silver backlash The Washington Post Archived from the original on November 30 2016 Retrieved November 3 2012 Nate Silver and the Trials of a Forecaster ThreeHundredEight com November 6 2012 Archived November 9 2012 at the Wayback Machine Cowles Gregory New York Times Best Sellers List The New York Times Archived from the original on December 5 2013 Retrieved December 5 2013 Notte Jason November 8 2012 Nate Silver sees soaring Amazon book sales The FiveThirtyEight blogger s confident and steadfast Obama forecast gets readers curious and critics furious MSN Money Archived from the original on January 15 2013 Scheiber Noam November 2 2012 Known Unknowns The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver The New York Times Archived from the original on October 6 2016 Retrieved October 16 2016 Carl Bialik Baseball Analyst Draws Fans by Crunching Election Numbers The Wall Street Journal June 2 2008 Archived June 6 2008 at the Wayback Machine Andrew Romano Making His Pitches Nate Silver an all star in the world of baseball stats may be the political arena s next big draw Article in Newsweek June 16 2008 Archived June 19 2008 at the Wayback Machine Julie Rehmeyer Scooping the Political Pollsters Article in Science News July 11 2008 Archived July 16 2008 at the Wayback Machine Adam Sternbergh The Spreadsheet Psychic Article in New York Magazine October 12 2008 Archived October 17 2008 at the Wayback Machine Derek Wallbank E L native s predictions pitch politics a curveball Applying baseball stats analysis creates buzz around 30 year old Lansing State Journal July 5 2008 Also highlighting Silver s dual skills at baseball and political analysis were Alex Altman Q amp A Political Pollster Nate Silver Article in Time October 6 2008 Joe Lemire The Sports Politics Connection FiveThirtyEight Sports Illustrated October 13 2008 Archived October 12 2008 at the Wayback Machine James Janega Odds are he knows the score Chicago statistician Nate Silver has turned from sports to politics with striking results Chicago Tribune October 27 2008 Archived October 28 2008 at the Wayback Machine Ben Heller The 2008 Sports Nerd of the Year Nate Silver permanent dead link CBSSports com November 7 2008 and Childs Walker Projecting politics amp baseball with Nate Silver Archived April 11 2009 at the Wayback Machine Baltimore Sun April 8 2009 The first such posting was Nate Silver Today s Polls The Bounce Hits the Badger State The New Republic June 12 2008 Archived June 14 2008 at the Wayback Machine Rasmussen Reports to Partner with FiveThirtyEight com Democratic Underground June 14 2008 Archived January 16 2013 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved November 27 2012 For example Poll watchers waiting for Iowans to settle The Rachel Maddow Show December 28 2011 Archived from the original on July 21 2012 via Bing Videos as well as What are the consequences of Iowa January 2 2012 Archived from the original on April 19 2012 For example Howard Kurtz September 25 2011 Nate Silver interview Part 1 Reliable Sources CNN Politics Interview Part 2 Reliable Sources CNN Politics September 25 2011 Video of Nate Silver on Bloomberg March 8 2010 bizbuzz3 November 3 2008 Nate Silver Youtube Archived from the original on February 18 2013 Retrieved August 21 2012 Nate Silver Why Gun Rights Rhetoric Is Winning December 17 2012 Archived November 5 2013 at the Wayback Machine Need to Know Nate Silver on Why Polls Don t Always Add Up Pbs org October 15 2010 Archived from the original on March 8 2013 Retrieved August 21 2012 What s the Impact of the Debt Debate August 2 2011 Archived August 27 2018 at the Wayback Machine Democracy Now 5 18 2010 Archived May 21 2010 at the Wayback Machine e g January 23 2012 Archived January 25 2012 at the Wayback Machine ABC Topline 9 28 2010 Archived October 25 2010 at the Wayback Machine For example on Keith Olbermann s Countdown on February 14 2012 Archived February 15 2012 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver on Colbert Report 2008 Archived December 18 2008 at the Wayback Machine and Nate Silver on Colbert Report 2012 Archived November 6 2012 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver on The Daily Show Archived October 18 2012 at the Wayback Machine Real Time with Bill Maher Hbo com Archived from the original on December 14 2013 Retrieved December 5 2013 Nick Stango Top 25 Nate Silver Facts Archived August 1 2017 at the Wayback Machine Gizmodo November 7 2012 Chris Taylor The Triumph of the Nerds Archived November 8 2012 at the Wayback Machine Mashable November 7 2012 Jocelyn Noveck He called it and now Silver s a pop culture star Associated Press November 9 2012 Archived August 4 2020 at the Wayback Machine Martin Robbins Can Nate Silver s example save political journalism The Guardian November 13 2012 Ken Bensinger Number crunchers were right about Obama despite what pundits said Archived November 11 2012 at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times November 8 2012 James Rainey Parsing polls Nate Silver picks on target Rasmussen not so much Archived November 9 2012 at the Wayback Machine Los Angeles Times November 8 2012 Ron Seely Seely on Science Nate Silver gains fame by harnessing power of math Archived June 23 2018 at the Wayback Machine Wisconsin State Journal November 9 2012 Greg Sargent What Nate Silver Really Accomplished Archived August 2 2017 at the Wayback Machine The Washington Post November 21 2012 Aluf Benn After 2012 make way for the digital press Haaretz December 29 2012 Conor Friedersdorf How Conservative Media Lost to the MSM and Failed the Rank and File The Atlantic November 7 2012 Archived January 20 2017 at the Wayback Machine Frank Rich Fantasyland Denial has poisoned the GOP and threatens the rest of the country too New York November 9 2012 Archived November 12 2012 at the Wayback Machine Tarun Wadhwa Nate Silver and the Rise of Political Data Science Forbes November 7 2012 Archived August 2 2017 at the Wayback Machine Dorie Clark How Nate Silver Won the 2012 Presidential Election Harvard Business Review November 7 2012 Archived November 11 2012 at the Wayback Machine Steve LeVine The smart guesswork that applies even in Nate Silver s world Quartz November 11 2012 Archived November 13 2012 at the Wayback Machine Joe Weisenthal Here s The Real Reason Nate Silver s Perfect Election Call Was Such An Awesome Breakthrough Business Insider November 10 2012 Archived November 10 2012 at the Wayback Machine Irving Wladawsky Berger Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight Prove Predictive Analytics Getting Real The Wall Street Journal December 16 2012 Archived June 23 2018 at the Wayback Machine Eric Lundquist Nate Silver s Big Data Lessons For The Enterprise Information Week November 8 2012 Archived November 10 2012 at the Wayback Machine Daniel Terdiman Among the top election quants Nate Silver reigns supreme CNET November 8 2012 Archived November 8 2012 at the Wayback Machine Kelly McBride What Nate Silver s success says about the 4th and 5th estates Poynter November 8 2012 Archived November 10 2012 at the Wayback Machine Jonathan Stray Data uncertainty and specialization What journalism can learn from FiveThirtyEight s election coverage Nieman Journalism Lab October 31 2012 Archived November 7 2012 at the Wayback Machine Jennifer Ouellette Why Math is Like the Honey Badger Nate Silver Scientific American November 7 2012 Archived November 8 2012 at the Wayback Machine and Bora Zivkovic Nate Silver and the Ascendance of Expertise Scientific American November 14 2012 Archived November 17 2012 at the Wayback Machine Today Show November 9 2012 Silver on Daily Show Nov 7 2012 Thedailyshow com Archived from the original on December 31 2013 Retrieved December 5 2013 Morning Joe Archived January 27 2013 at the Wayback Machine on November 20 2012 ABC News This Week Abcnews go com Archived from the original on December 9 2013 Retrieved December 5 2013 The Magicians Season 2 Episode 10 Review The Girl Who Told Time Den of Geek permanent dead link Wemple Erik November 9 2015 Nate Silver accuses Vox of recycling Wikipedia entries The Washington Post Archived from the original on March 12 2021 Retrieved November 14 2019 Ripon 2013 video Archived May 4 2016 at the Wayback Machine of Ripon College honorary degree award and commencement speech New School 2013 commencement video Archived February 3 2014 at the Wayback Machine Phi Beta Kappa book award in science Pbk org October 8 2013 Archived from the original on October 24 2013 Retrieved December 5 2013 Honorary Doctorate for Nate Silver LStat Leuven Statistics Research Centre Archived December 4 2013 at archive today Luc Vander Elst Honorary doctorate for Nate Silver the man who made statistics cool KU Leuven December 18 2013 Archived December 24 2013 at the Wayback Machine Honorary doctorate from Amherst 2014 Archived May 27 2014 at the Wayback Machine 193rd Commencement at Amherst College masslive com Archived from the original on May 27 2014 Retrieved May 26 2014 Georgetown Announces 2017 Commencement Speakers Archived May 17 2017 at the Wayback Machine Kenyon College honorary degree Archived May 20 2018 at the Wayback Machine Bloom Nate November 13 2012 Interfaith Celebrities Nate Silver Another Bond and Happy Endings InterfaithFamily Archived from the original on November 21 2012 His mother is the granddaughter of the late Harmon Lewis once head of the Alcoa Steamship Company Silver s middle name is also the first name of a maternal great aunt and the middle name of his mother s sister Carole Cadwalladr Nate Silver it s the numbers stupid Article in The Guardian November 17 2012 Archived November 21 2016 at the Wayback Machine a b Carole Cadwalladr Nate Silver it s the numbers stupid Article in The Observer November 17 2012 Archived November 21 2016 at the Wayback Machine Japhy Grant Nate Silver on African Americans Prop 8 and Being A Hero to Gays amp Geeks Everywhere Queerty November 21 2008 Archived November 15 2012 at the Wayback Machine retrieved November 6 2012 Change Doesn t Usually Come This Fast Archived June 28 2015 at the Wayback Machine Nate Silver FiveThirtyEight June 26 2015 accessed June 29 2015 Scoresheet Fantasy Baseball Overview The best fantasy baseball sim game www scoresheet com Archived from the original on July 26 2017 Retrieved July 31 2017 Zak Stambor Number Cruncher University of Chicago Magazine July August 2008 Archived July 21 2008 at the Wayback Machine BurritoBracket com Burritobracket blogspot com February 23 2004 Archived from the original on January 14 2013 Retrieved August 21 2012 On the role of The Burrito Bracket in Silver s engagement in blogging see Dan Cohen The Ivory Tower and the Open Web Introduction Burritos Browsers and Books Dan Cohen s Digital Humanities blog July 26 2011 Archived August 10 2011 at the Wayback Machine retrieved August 6 2011 See Hageman cited previously Kaiser Rob October 3 2004 Players Place Bets on Poker as Career Chicago Tribune Archived from the original on January 15 2013 Retrieved July 2 2009 Nate Silver s profile on The Hendon Mob The Hendon Mob Poker Database Archived from the original on July 13 2023 Retrieved December 30 2023 Silver Nate July 12 2023 Nate Silver Places 93rd in the 2023 WSOP Main Event Twitter Archived from the original on July 13 2023 Retrieved July 13 2023 Rose Charlie host October 29 2012 Mark Halperin of Time magazine and Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight com on the Presidential election Charlie Rose PBS Archived from the original on September 26 2013 Retrieved October 6 2013 Silver Nate Not everyone who disagrees with you is a closet right winger Silver Bulletin Substack Archived from the original on September 12 2023 Retrieved September 13 2023 Further reading editCalderone Michael August 15 2019 Behind Nate Silver s war with The New York Times Politico Retrieved August 18 2019 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nate Silver nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Nate Silver Appearances on C SPAN nbsp Nate Silver at IMDb nbsp Nate Silver s publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database subscription required Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Nate Silver amp oldid 1217640570, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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