1. Nathaniel Read Silver was born on January 13,1978 and is an American statistician, political analyst, author, sports gambler, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball and elections.
56 Facts About Nate Silver
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Nate Silver 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.
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Since departing FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver has been publishing in his online newsletter Nate Silver Bulletin and serves as an advisor to Polymarket.
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Nate Silver was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2009 after his election forecasting model correctly predicted the outcomes in 49 of 50 states in the 2008 US presidential election.
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Nate Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan, to Sally, a community activist, and Brian David Nate Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University.
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Nate Silver showed a proficiency in math from a young age.
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In 2000, Nate Silver graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Chicago.
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Nate Silver wrote for the Chicago Weekly News and the Chicago Maroon.
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Nate Silver spent his third year at the London School of Economics.
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Nate Silver quit his job at KPMG in April 2004 and for a time earned his living mainly by playing online poker.
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In 2003, Nate Silver became a writer for Baseball Prospectus, after having sold PECOTA to BP in return for a partnership interest.
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Nate Silver further developed PECOTA and wrote a weekly column under the heading "Lies, Damned Lies".
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Nate Silver 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.
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Between 2003 and 2009, Nate Silver co-authored the Baseball Prospectus annual book of Major League Baseball forecasts, 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, Baseball Between the Numbers, and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.
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Nate Silver produced the PECOTA forecasts for each Major League Baseball season from 2003 through 2009.
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On November 1,2007, while still employed by Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver began publishing a diary under the pseudonym "Poblano" on the progressive political blog Daily Kos.
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Nate Silver set out to analyze quantitative aspects of the political game to enlighten a broader audience.
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On March 7,2008, while still writing as "Poblano", Nate Silver established his own blog, FiveThirtyEight.
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On June 1,2008, Nate Silver published a two-page op-ed in the New York Post outlining the rationale underlying his focus on the statistical aspects of politics.
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Nate Silver first appeared on national television on CNN's American Morning on June 13,2008.
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Later in November 2008, Nate Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for a $700,000 advance.
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Nate Silver was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009, and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive conference.
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Nate Silver tried his luck in the 2009 World Series of Poker.
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In November 2009, ESPN introduced a new Soccer Power Index, designed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
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Nate Silver published a post-mortem after the tournament, comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems.
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At that time, Nate Silver began to drop hints that after 2012 he would turn his attention to matters other than detailed statistical forecasting of elections.
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Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie "Moneyball" disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players, Nate Silver disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics.
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When FiveThirtyEight was relaunched under Disney's ESPN on March 17,2014, Nate Silver outlined the scope of topics that would be covered under the rubric of "data journalism":.
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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 Nate Silver was then using.
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Nate Silver correctly predicted the winners of every US Senate race.
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Shortly after FiveThirtyEight relocated to The New York Times, Silver introduced his prediction models for the 2010 elections to the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, and state governorships.
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Nate Silver eventually published detailed forecasts and analyses of the results for all three sets of elections.
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Nate Silver correctly predicted the winner in 34 of the 37 contested Senate races.
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Nate Silver predicted a Republican pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives; the GOP won 63 seats.
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Nate Silver published the first iteration of his 2012 general election forecasts on June 7,2012.
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Nate Silver's quantitative focus on polling data, without insight from experience in political organizing or journalism, has been a recurring critique from experienced commentators.
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For example, Nate 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.
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Josh Jordan wrote in National Review that Nate 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".
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Nate Silver responded with the offer of a $1,000 wager over the outcome of the election.
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The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, while defending Nate Silver's analysis, characterized the wager as "a bad idea" as it gave the appearance of a partisan motive for Nate Silver, and "inappropriate" for someone perceived as a Times journalist.
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Nate Silver retained the IP of 538's election forecasting model as he left, and in June 2024, released his own election forecasting model at Nate Silver Bulletin, using methodology similar to his model at 538.
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In June 2024, Nate Silver joined the prediction market startup Polymarket as an advisor.
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Nate Silver described it as at best ignoring the polls and overly weighting Biden's incumbency, and at worst as being "buggy".
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Nate 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, Newsweek, Science News, and his hometown Lansing State Journal.
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Nate Silver appeared on The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher.
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That Nate 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, to online and mainstream newspapers, news and commentary magazines, business media, trade journals, media about media, and Scientific American, as well as a feature interview on The Today Show, a return appearance on The Daily Show, and an appearance on Morning Joe.
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Nate Silver is referenced in the Syfy channel show The Magicians as an earth wizard who uses polling spells.
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In 2015, Nate Silver appeared on the podcast Employee of the Month, where he criticized Vox Media for "recycling Wikipedia entries" in their content.
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Nate Silver is a great-grandson of Harmon Lewis, the President of Alcoa Steamship Company, as well as a great-great-nephew of the embryologist Warren Harmon Lewis and his wife, biologist Margaret Reed Lewis.
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Nate Silver 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.
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Nate Silver has long been interested in fantasy baseball, especially Scoresheet Baseball.
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When he took up political writing, Nate Silver abandoned his blog, The Burrito Bracket, in which he ran a one-and-done competition among the taquerias in his Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago.
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Nate Silver has $887,338 in total tournament earnings, including an 87th place finish in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event.
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Nate Silver added that he has voted Democratic in every presidential election he voted, 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 big difference to the future of the country".
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Nate Silver has criticized "the progressive political class", believing that it has become "more left and less liberal".
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Nate Silver has stated he voted for Kathy Hochul in 2022 and Kamala Harris in 2024, but has criticized some of the Democratic Party's actions and political positions.