Nate Silver
Founder, FiveThirtyEight | Author, "The Signal And The Noise"
Politics
US Elections
Big Data & Data Science
Artificial Intelligence
“Almost nothing about what Joe Biden is doing for the next few weeks is gonna matter much for November. And almost everything about what Donald Trump is doing is going to matter a lot.” — Nate Silver

Nate Silver has become today's leading statistician through his innovative analyses of political polling. He first gained national attention during the 2008 presidential election, when he correctly predicted the results of the primaries and the presidential winner in 49 states. In 2012, he called 50 of 50 states.

Nate is a pioneer of the new field of data journalism with his award-winning website FiveThirtyEight. Now in partnership with ABC News, FiveThirtyEight allows Nate to contribute to the election coverage as well as continuing to explore a wide range of areas including politics, sports, science, and more. Nate’s approach to data-driven, probabilistic thinking is one of the great ideas of our time, and we at the Leigh Bureau look forward eagerly to seeing it transform more and more fields.

Before he came to politics, he established his credentials as an analyst of baseball statistics. He developed a widely acclaimed system called PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), which predicts player performance, career development, and seasonal winners and losers. He is the author of a series of books on baseball statistics, which include Mind Game, Baseball Between the Numbers, and It Ain't Over 'til It's Over.

His book, The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don't, is a New York Times bestseller. Data-based predictions underpin a growing sector of critical fields, from political polling and hurricane watches to the stock market and even the war on terror. That means it's important to ask — what kind of predictions can we trust? What methods do the most reliable forecasters use? What sorts of things can be predicted — and what can't? Nate takes us on a tour of modern prediction science, uncovering a surprising connection among humility, uncertainty and good results. It's an essential read for anyone interested in how data can be used to understand the future. His next book will address gambling and risk, ambitiously touching on poker, sports betting, game theory, venture capital and entrepreneurship, effective altruism, rationality and utilitarianism, existential risk, artificial intelligence, the cryptocurrency boom and the collapse of FTX, the commercial gambling industry, the personality traits associated with risk-taking, and declining life expectancy and changing attitudes toward risk in American society.

Nate has written for ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Slate, New York Sun, and The New York Times. His work has been reported in such publications as The New York Times, Newsweek, The Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair.

He has been honored by a series of accolades. Most recently, Fast Company named Nate No. 1 of the100 Most Creative People in Business 2013 and Creativity magazine listed him in its Creativity 50 2013. He has also appeared in TIME's 100 Most Influential People of 2009 and Rolling Stone's 100 Agents of Change. FiveThirtyEight.com won Best Political Coverage in the 2008 Weblog Awards.
Show more
Topics
The Signal and the Noise
Show more
Data and Prediction
Show more
Videos
Conversations with Tyler | Mercatus Center
Nate Silver
Short Videos
This speaker does not have any short videos yet.
Articles
This speaker does not have any articles yet.
Podcasts
Book
Nate Silver
for your event
Request Availability
Download Bio
Related Speakers
No items found.
Request Availability