Nate Silver facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Nate Silver
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Silver playing poker at Manifest 2023, a forecasting conference, in Berkeley, California
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Nathaniel Read Silver
January 13, 1978 East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
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| Education | University of Chicago (BA) |
| Occupation | Statistician, journalist |
| Years active | 2000–present |
| Known for | PECOTA, FiveThirtyEight, Silver Bulletin |
Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978), known as Nate Silver, is an American expert in statistics and writing. He uses math to understand and predict things in sports like baseball and basketball, and also in elections.
Nate Silver is the person who started FiveThirtyEight, a popular website. He was the main editor there and also worked for ABC News until May 2023. After leaving FiveThirtyEight, Silver started writing on his own blog called Silver Bulletin. He also advises a company called Polymarket.
In 2009, Time magazine named Silver one of the world's 100 most influential people. This was because his model for predicting elections correctly guessed the winners in 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. His later models also predicted the results of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections very accurately.
Silver's main way of working is to use statistical models. These models help him understand complicated systems, like how professional sports work, how popular political ideas become, and how elections turn out.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Nate Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan. His mother, Sally, was a community activist. His father, Brian David Silver, was a professor of political science at Michigan State University.
From a young age, Nate was very good at math. He loved baseball, especially the Detroit Tigers. He found it more fun to use math for baseball batting averages than for algebra class.
While at East Lansing High School, Silver showed his writing skills. He was a writer and editor for the student newspaper. In 1996, he won first place in a state debate contest in Michigan.
In 2000, Silver graduated with honors from the University of Chicago. He earned a degree in economics. He also wrote for student newspapers there. He spent one year studying at the London School of Economics.
Early Career and Baseball Analysis
Starting Out in Consulting
After college, from 2000 to 2004, Silver worked as a consultant for a company called KPMG in Chicago. He later said that spending four years at a job he didn't like was his biggest regret.
While working at KPMG, Silver kept up his interest in baseball and statistics. He began creating his own system called PECOTA. In April 2004, he left his job. For a while, he made money by playing online poker. He reportedly earned a lot of money from this.
Becoming a Baseball Expert
In 2003, Silver started writing for Baseball Prospectus (BP). He had sold his PECOTA system to BP in exchange for a share in the company. After leaving KPMG, he became an executive at BP.
Silver improved his PECOTA system. He wrote a weekly column called "Lies, Damned Lies." He used special math techniques, called sabermetrics, to study baseball. He predicted how individual players would perform and looked at the business side of baseball.
He also wrote articles about baseball for other places like ESPN.com and Sports Illustrated. He wrote over 200 articles for Baseball Prospectus.
What is PECOTA?
PECOTA stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. It is a statistical system that predicts how baseball players will perform in the future. It helps fans interested in fantasy baseball and professionals in the baseball business.
PECOTA works by finding "comparable" players from the past. It uses their past performance to guess how a current player might do. Unlike other systems, PECOTA also shows a range of possible outcomes, not just one number. This helps show how uncertain predictions can be.
PECOTA predictions were first published in 2003 by Baseball Prospectus. Silver created these forecasts for each Major League Baseball season until 2009.
FiveThirtyEight: From 2008 to 2023
Creating a New Kind of Blog
In 2007, Nate Silver started writing on a political blog using the name "Poblano." He wanted to use numbers and statistics to explain politics to more people. He felt frustrated that political discussions often lacked good data.
On March 7, 2008, Silver started his own blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. People often call it just 538. The name comes from the Electoral College in the United States, which has 538 electors.
In May 2008, Silver revealed that he was "Poblano." He then explained in an article why he focused on the statistical side of politics. He first appeared on national TV on CNN in June 2008.
Silver said he usually votes for Democratic candidates, but not always. He tried to make his election predictions fair and unbiased. He shared as much as he could about how he made his forecasts.
Success in the 2008 Election
After the November 2008 election, Nate Silver became very famous. His FiveThirtyEight.com blog accurately predicted the winner in 49 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. He only missed Indiana. He also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race.
This amazing accuracy made him a leading expert in political predictions. He even signed a contract to write two books. He was invited to speak at major conferences like TED.
After this success, Silver mostly stopped his work as a baseball analyst. He focused more on political statistics.
Moving to The New York Times
On August 25, 2010, FiveThirtyEight moved to The New York Times newspaper. The blog then focused mainly on predicting the results of the 2010 U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and state governor elections.
Silver continued to publish detailed forecasts. He correctly predicted the winner in 34 out of 37 Senate races. His predictions for the House of Representatives were not as perfect as in 2008, but still good. He correctly predicted 36 out of 37 governor races.
Leaving The New York Times
In July 2013, ESPN (which is part of Walt Disney Company) announced that it had bought the FiveThirtyEight website. Silver became the editor-in-chief of the site. He planned to build a team of journalists and analysts.
Some people at The New York Times were sad to see him go. Others, especially traditional journalists, did not always like his statistical approach.
Moving to ABC News and Departure
In 2018, Disney moved the FiveThirtyEight site from ESPN to the ABC News division. In April 2023, Nate Silver announced that his contract with ABC would not be renewed. This happened during widespread layoffs at Disney and ABC.
After Silver left in May 2023, a smaller FiveThirtyEight team continued to operate under ABC News.
FiveThirtyEight's Election Forecasts
2008 U.S. Elections
In March 2008, Silver started his blog FiveThirtyEight.com. He created a system to track polls and predict the outcome of the 2008 general election. His forecasts for the 2008 Democratic primary elections were much more accurate than those from professional pollsters. This made his work, and his secret identity "Poblano," very well-known.
The popularity of FiveThirtyEight.com grew quickly. Silver's final prediction for the 2008 presidential election correctly guessed the winner of 49 out of 50 states and Washington, D.C. He only missed Indiana. He also correctly predicted all U.S. Senate races. This accuracy brought him great praise.
2012 U.S. Elections
Silver published his first predictions for the 2012 general election on June 7, 2012. His model showed that Barack Obama had a good chance of winning.
On the morning of the November 6, 2012, presidential election, Silver's final update gave President Barack Obama a 90.9% chance of winning. Silver's model correctly predicted the winner of every single one of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. This was a perfect record for that election.
2016 U.S. Elections
In the week before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the FiveThirtyEight team predicted that Hillary Clinton had a 64.5% chance of winning. Their final prediction on Election Day gave Clinton a 71% chance. Other major forecasters predicted Clinton would win with an even higher chance (85% to 99%).
Donald Trump ended up winning the election. FiveThirtyEight had given Trump a much higher chance (29%) of winning compared to other models. This prediction was criticized by some before the election.
2020 U.S. Elections
For the 2020 United States presidential election, FiveThirtyEight predicted that Joe Biden had an 89% chance of winning. Biden won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. FiveThirtyEight only missed Florida, North Carolina, and Maine's 2nd congressional district in their predictions. In these places, Donald Trump won, even though FiveThirtyEight had given Biden better chances.
After FiveThirtyEight: Since 2023
After leaving FiveThirtyEight in May 2023, Nate Silver started writing on his own blog, Silver Bulletin. He kept the rights to his election forecasting model. In June 2024, he released his own election prediction model on Silver Bulletin, which uses methods similar to his old model.
In June 2024, Silver also became an advisor for a company called Polymarket, which is a prediction market startup. In August of the same year, Silver released his new book, On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. This book explores how taking smart, calculated risks can be helpful in many areas, like money, poker, and even helping others.
2024 U.S. Elections
During the time leading up to the 2024 elections between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Silver criticized the new model used by FiveThirtyEight. He felt it ignored polls too much or had errors. After Joe Biden left the race, FiveThirtyEight changed their model to focus more on polls.
Silver's own final forecast for the 2024 election showed Trump and Harris had almost an equal chance of winning the Electoral College. His model also predicted that Trump winning all seven swing states was the most likely single outcome. Trump won the Presidency and all seven swing states.
Silver's final forecast also correctly favored the eventual winner in 48 out of 50 states, Washington, D.C., and all congressional districts that award electoral votes. Only Trump's wins in Michigan and Wisconsin were not predicted as the majority outcome in Silver's simulations.
The Signal and the Noise
Nate Silver's book, The Signal and The Noise, was published in the United States on September 27, 2012. It quickly became a bestseller on The New York Times list. Sales of the book greatly increased after the 2012 election.
The book explains how to build mathematical models using probability and statistics. Silver looks at how we use statistical tools. He combines unique data with historical information and good statistical analysis. The book uses examples from baseball, elections, climate change, the financial crisis, poker, and weather forecasting. These different topics help explain different statistical ideas.
The book shows some successes in predictions, like meteorologists predicting a hurricane's path. But it mostly talks about failures. It explains that we are still not very good at predicting things like major earthquakes or the spread of new diseases, even with a lot of smart people working on these problems.
Blogs and Other Publications
- Blogs
- FiveThirtyEight blog, now owned by ABC
- Nate Silver's Baseball Prospectus article archive (2003–2009)
- Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin
- 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 Appearances
When Nate Silver revealed his identity in 2008, he received a lot of attention. Many articles were written about his unique skill in forecasting both baseball and politics.
He appeared as a political analyst on many TV channels, including MSNBC, CNN, and ABC News. He also appeared on popular shows like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show.
His accurate predictions in the 2012 presidential race, especially when some critics doubted him, led to even more media coverage. He was featured in many newspapers, magazines, and on TV shows like The Today Show.
In 2015, Silver appeared on a podcast where he criticized some media outlets for just "recycling Wikipedia entries."
Awards and Recognition
- April 30, 2009: TIME magazine named Silver one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People."
- May 12, 2013: He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Ripon College.
- May 24, 2013: He received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from The New School.
- October 2013: His book, The Signal and the Noise, won the 2013 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. This award recognizes great science writing.
- December 2013: The University of Leuven in Belgium gave Silver an honorary doctoral degree. This was for his important work in developing and sharing good prediction methods in sports and politics.
- May 25, 2014: He received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Amherst College.
- May 2017: Georgetown University awarded Silver a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
- May 2018: Kenyon College awarded Silver a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
Personal Life
Nate Silver is related to some notable people. His great-uncles, Caswell Silver and Leon Silver, were famous geologists.
Silver has always felt a bit like an outsider. He believes this perspective is important. He has been interested in fantasy baseball for a long time. He also plays poker semi-professionally and has won a lot of money in tournaments.
Political Views
In a 2023 newsletter, Silver clarified his political views. He said he has voted Democratic in every presidential election he has participated in. However, he also voted for John Kasich in the 2016 Republican primary. He felt that a different Republican leader would make a big difference for the country.
Silver has also criticized some parts of the "progressive political class." He believes it has become "more left and less liberal." He voted for Kathy Hochul in 2022 and Kamala Harris in 2024. But he has also criticized some actions and ideas of the Democratic Party.
See also
- Computational statistics
- Political analysis
- Sports betting
