Nate Silver
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician, political analyst, author, sports gambler, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, football, 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. Since departing FiveThirtyEight, Silver has been publishing in his online newsletter Silver Bulletin and serves as an advisor to Polymarket.
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 U.S. presidential election. His subsequent models predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with high accuracy. Although he gave Donald Trump, the eventual winner, a 28.6% chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election, this was a higher estimate than other major scientific forecasts.
Much of Silver's approach can be characterized by using statistical models to understand complex social systems such as professional sports, the popularity of political platforms and elections.
Early life and education
Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan, to Sally, a community activist, and Brian David Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University. 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. Silver's father's family includes two uncles—Leon Silver and Caswell Silver—who were distinguished geologists. Silver has described himself as "half-Jewish".Silver showed a proficiency in math from a young age. 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. "
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. Silver won first place in the state of Michigan in the 49th John S. Knight Scholarship Contest for senior high school debaters in 1996.
In 2000, Silver graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He also wrote for the South Side Weekly and The Chicago Maroon. He spent his third year at the London School of Economics.
Early career: 2000–2008
Economic consultant: 2000–2004
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". 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. According to Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff, over a three-year period Silver earned $400,000 from online poker.Baseball analyst: 2003–2008
In 2003, Silver became a writer for Baseball Prospectus, 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.Between 2003 and 2009, 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.
He contributed articles about baseball to ESPN.com, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the New York Sun, and The New York Times.
Silver wrote more than 200 articles for Baseball Prospectus.
PECOTA
PECOTA 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.
''FiveThirtyEight'': 2008–2023
''FiveThirtyEight'' blog
Creation and motivation
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. 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'". His forecasts of the 2008 United States presidential primary elections drew considerable attention, including being cited by The New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Kristol.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.
On May 30, 2008, Poblano revealed his identity to FiveThirtyEight.com readers. 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. He first appeared on national television on CNN's American Morning on June 13, 2008.
Silver described his partisan orientation as follows in the FAQ on his website: "My state has non-partisan registration, so I am not registered as anything. I vote for Democratic candidates the majority of the time. This year, I have been a supporter of Barack Obama." With respect to the impartiality of his electoral projections, Silver stated, "Are results biased toward preferred candidates? I hope not, but that is for you to decide. I have tried to disclose as much about my methodology as possible."
2008 election and aftermath
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.... 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 book from now through the first of the year,' 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.Later in November 2008, Silver signed a contract with Penguin Group USA to write two books, reportedly for a $700,000 advance.
Silver was invited to be a speaker at TED 2009 in February 2009, and keynote speaker at the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive conference.
While maintaining his FiveThirtyEight.com website, in January 2009 Silver began a monthly feature column, "The Data", in Esquire as well as contributed occasional articles to other media such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He also tried his luck in the 2009 World Series of Poker.
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. 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, designed by Nate Silver, for predicting the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. He published a post-mortem after the tournament, comparing his predictions to those of alternative rating systems.
In April 2010, in an assignment for New York magazine, Silver created a quantitative index of "The Most Livable Neighborhoods in New York".