Nate Silver

Founder, FiveThirtyEight | Bestselling Author, "The Signal And The Noise"
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Nate Silver is today's leading statistician known for his innovative and highly accurate models for 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.
A pioneer in the field of data journalism, Nate founded the award-winning website FiveThirtyEight and served as its editor-in-chief until 2023. Born out of frustration with the lack of sophistication in popular polling metrics, FiveThirtyEight began as a personal blog for political polling aggregation and analysis. The accuracy of Silver’s election predictions earned him national renown and as the site grew, it pointed its data-driven approach to other topics such as sports, science, and popular culture, becoming the go-to source for reputable and accessible statistical analysis of any issue.
Before he came to politics, Silver 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.
Silver is author of the bestselling book, The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don't. Called “accessible” and “painstakingly researched” by Wall Street Journal, the book breaks down how to make reliable distinctions between both meaningful signals and noisy data, and confident predictions and accurate ones. Forbes deemed it “essential reading in the era of Big Data that touches every business, every sports event, and every policymaker.” 
Expanding his statistical expertise beyond politics and polling, Nate is currently working on a book about gambling and risk. Inspired by his experiences as a professional poker player, the book touches on poker, sports betting, game theory, and the commercial gambling industry, while also tying together venture capital and entrepreneurship, effective altruism, rationality and utilitarianism, existential risk, artificial intelligence, the crypto boom and the collapse of FTX, the personality traits associated with risk-taking, declining life expectancy, and changing attitudes toward risk in American society all into a coherent whole.
Nate publishes his insights and statistical assessments of cultural phenomena to over 36,000 subscribers on his Silver Bulletin Substack. He has also written for ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Slate, New York Sun, and New York Times. His work has been reported in such publications as New York Times, Newsweek, Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair. He has been named one of Fast Company‘s 100 Most Creative People in Business, TIME's 100 Most Influential People, and Rolling Stone's 100 Agents of Change.

Topics

The Signal and the Noise

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Data and Prediction

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Videos

Conversations with Tyler | Mercatus Center
Nate Silver

Articles

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Libertarians Are the Real Liberals
reason
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Google abandoned "don't be evil" — and Gemini is the result
Silver Bulletin
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It's time for the White House to put up or shut up
Silver Bulletin
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What a Split in Consumer Confidence Means for Biden
New York Times
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Officially announcing On The Edge, my new book
Silver Bulletin
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Free speech is in trouble
Silver Bulletin
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It's gonna be a very long and exceptionally tedious road to November 2024
Silver Bulletin
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Journalists should be skeptical of all sources — including scientists
Silver Bulletin
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What it's like to run deep in the WSOP Main Event (Part 1)
Silver Bulletin
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For Nate Silver, ‘Poker is a Part of My Life Now’
World Poker Tour
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Polling averages shouldn't be political litmus tests
Silver Bulletin
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What Was Nate Silver's Data Revolution?
New Yorker
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Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight's advice to founders
Fortune

Podcasts

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US Politics
Big Data & Data Science
Current Events
Presidential Series
Artificial Intelligence
Geopolitics & Globalization
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