​Nate Silver

- FiveThirtyEight - Wikipedia -

Oct 17, 2017: Politico: ​The ‘Nate Silver Effect’ Is Changing Journalism. Is That Good?
Aggregators and forecasting websites such as RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight, which attracted a combined 200 million visits in October 2016, have altered the way political reporters cover American politics, but among journalists and survey researchers, considerable ambivalence remains over whether these changes have, on balance, been for the better.

Nov 7, 2016: Intelligencer: ​Why Nate Silver’s Forecast (Probably) Overstates Trump’s Chances
Right now, FiveThirtyEight — the site founded by celebrated data wizard Nate Silver — gives Trump a nearly one in three shot of winning the presidency Tuesday night. The Huffington Post, by contrast, puts his chances at roughly 2 percent

Aug 25, 2014: Newsmax: Democrats Fear Nate Silver's Predictions for Midterms
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has issued an urgent appeal for funds in the wake of new predictions from statistician and forecaster Nate Silver that the DSCC calls "scary."

Apr 30, 2014: World Wide Woodard: American Nations among dueling maps at Washington Post
There's been a lot of talk about what America's real political regions should be on the internet of late, with Nate Silver's 538 weighing in on the Midwest and South, and the Washington Post's The Fix taking on the continent. Needless to say, I joined the fray on Twitter to argue there's never been a Midwest or a single South, proffering the American Nations map.

Apr 1, 2014: Salon: Nate Silver: When political gaffes matter
While little more than media sideshows in presidential campaigns, gaffes can turn senate races, says the stats man

Mar 27, 2014: Daily Show: Nate Silver
Nate Silver discusses his website, FiveThirtyEight.com.

Mar 25, 2014: Business Week: The Koch Brothers Are Spending Circles Around Democrats
Nate Silver’s dour forecast about the Democrats’ diminishing likelihood of holding on to the Senate isn’t the only cause of liberal angst. The dreaded Koch brothers—that’d be David and Charles Koch, the fifth- and sixth-richest men on the planet, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, who are together worth precisely $100 billion—have been plowing money into the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which has unleashed a fusillade of negative ads against vulnerable Democratic senators. In fact, AFP has dramatically outspent the Senate Majority PAC and the House Majority PAC, the main outside Democratic groups.

Mar 25, 2014: Angry Bear: Silver vs Academic Election Forecasters
In a recent post, I mentioned a blog post by Nate Silver which I hadn’t managed to google. It is here

Mar 24, 2014: Huffington Post: Nate Silver Predicts GOP Senate Win, Democrats Promptly Freak Out
Cue the hand-wringing in Democratic circles everywhere: Nate Silver says the GOP will probably re-take the Senate in November's elections.

Mar 23, 2014: Angry Bear: Krugman Vs Silver
I grab a rare opportunity to criticize Paul Krugman. He is, again, discussing the roll out of Nate Silver’s new fivethirtyeight.com with concern bordering on dismay.

Mar 20, 2014: National Journal: Nate Silver Is Having an Ezra Klein Moment
This week it's former New York Times data journalism wiz Nate Silver, founder of the newly launched FiveThirtyEight.com, who is under fire. Activists and at least one high-profile climate scientist are taking aim at Silver's decision to add University of Colorado environmental studies professor Roger Pielke Jr. as a contributing writer.

Mar 14, 2014: Balloon Juice: Nate Silver, Foxes & Hedgehogs
Joe Coscarelli, at NYMag, has a long interview with Nate Silver:

Nov 19, 2013: Poynter: Nate Silver’s site hires Tampa Bay Times managing editor
Tampa Bay Times Managing Editor Mike Wilson will be managing editor of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com, which plans a relaunch under ESPN’s auspices next year.

Fast Company: Most Creative People 2013 1. Nate Silver
Silver is arguably peerless at interpreting data in the domains of sports and politics. Early in his career, he created an analytical model for baseball stats known as PECOTA, which did an exceedingly good job of identifying the minor-league prospects most likely to perform well in the majors.

Oct 18, 2013: Politico: Nate Silver previews site, hits POLITICO
Nate Silver, the statistician who recently joined ESPN from The New York Times, previewed his new website on Friday and dished out some criticisms of the current journalism environment, much of it directed at POLITICO.

July 26, 2013: Boston Globe: Nate Silver is back to his roots at ESPN
Analytics rock star Nate Silver, whose wildly popular statistics- and probability-centric FiveThirtyEight.com website was purchased by the network and will be leaving its current home at the New York Times sometime after August, does have genuine sports bona fides.

July 22, 2013: Politico: Nate Silver 'disruptive' at Times, public editor says
Nate Silver, the star political statistician, was a "disruptive" outsider at The New York Times, his work disliked by some of his colleagues.

Nov 17, 2012: ​The Guardian: Nate Silver: it's the numbers, stupid
Nate Silver is a new kind of political superstar. One who actually knows what he's talking about. In America, punditry has traditionally been about having the right kind of hair or teeth or foaming rightwing views. Silver has none of these. He just has numbers. Lots of them. And, on the night of the US presidential election, they were proved to be right in quite spectacular fashion.

Jan 13, 1978: Nathaniel Read Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan.

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.

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.

May 30, 2008: Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight.com readers.

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.

June 13, 2008: Silver first appeared on national television on CNN's American Morning.

 Oct 9, 2008: Adam Sternbergh in an op-ed posted at New York Magazine wrote:  "FiveThirtyEight is the product of a movement, but also of a moment. The political media is polarized. Cable anchors choke on their own spin. The red states and blue states act like the Jets versus the Sharks—they don’t trust us and we don’t trust them. So we all rail against the enemy in the echo chambers of comment boards, retreating to the bomb-shelter safety of partisan blogs.
     It’s not that Silver is objective or impartial—he’s not. He’s still that young guy who almost yelled “Fired up!” across a crowded Mexican restaurant. But his ultimate goal is simple and nonpartisan: to build a better expert. Sure, he’ll be disappointed if Obama loses. But he also says, “If Obama does lose, I think it’s healthy to try and understand why, rather than just kicking and throwing things.” If he ever decides to run for office, that wouldn’t make for a bad slogan. Nate Silver: More understanding. Less kicking and throwing things."

April 30, 2009: Silver was named one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by TIME magazine.

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."

Aug 25, 2010: The New York Times "FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus" began with the publication of "New Forecast Shows Democrats Losing 6 to 7 Senate Seats."

Nov 19, 2010: Silver's Times Sunday Magazine feature first appeared  under the heading "Go Figure."

June 7, 2012: Silver published the first iteration of his 2012 general election forecasts. 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.

Sept 27, 2012: Silver's book "The Signal and The Noise "was published in the United States.

November 6, 2012: On the morning of the 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.

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.

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.

July 22, 2013: ESPN 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."

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

Nov 6, 2016 FiveThirtyEight founder and editor-in-chief Nate Silver thinks both candidates still have their work cut out for them ahead of Election Day

ON THE RECORD: Jan 21, 2014: Jonathan Cohn has announced in his New Republic article that "Policy Journalism Is Having Its Moment." The article is primarily dedicated to the the decision by  Ezra Klein to quit the Washington Post in order to start a new journalism project. Melissa Bell  and Dylan Matthews will also be leaving WaPo with him. Cohn sees something bigger in this move and summarizes that "the unsettling part of Klein’s departure is the shift in power, away from large media organizations, it would seem to reinforce. All but the largest newspapers are dying and we don’t know, yet, exactly what will take their places. But, overall, journalism is richer and more informative because people like Josh Marshall, Nate Silver, and now Ezra Klein are reinventing it." Andrew Beaujon (Poynter) listed several people who have left the established media and are looking at new ventures ("Washington Post announces Ezra Klein is leaving"): "Nate Silver decided last year to leave The New York Times for ESPN, which plans to relaunch his FiveThirtyEight.com under its auspices soon. Glenn Greenwald left the Guardian last year to join a “a new mass media organization” funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Dan Froomkin and Jay Rosen also joined the new organization in varying capacities.  Gawker’s Neetzan Zimmerman will be the editor-in-chief of a starting shareup called Whisper. Gabriel Snyder, formerly the editor-in-chief of The Wire, will be chief content officer of a mobile news startup called Inside.com. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg’s site AllThingsD announced last year they would part ways with Dow Jones & Co. and relaunched as Re/Code this year. The Wall Street Journal launched a replacement site, WSJD. Both promised live events. Another spinoff from the Journal: The Information, a subscription tech-news site edited by former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin. Proto-blogger Andrew Sullivan left The Daily Beast in early 2013 to relaunch his Daily Dish as an independent, subscription-based publication. Sullivan wrote on Dec. 31. that in its first year, the publication had raised more than $800,000 in subscription revenue and has “almost 34,000 subscribers.” One thing that is clear through all this is that the internet is not done changing the face of journalism.

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March 17, 2014: Founded by Silver, The ESPN-owned FiveThirtyEight launched.

May 25, 2014: Silver received a Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Amherst College.

November 8, 2016:  The FiveThirtyEight team gave Clinton a 71% chance to win the 2016 United States presidential election.

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