Nate Silver
Nate Silver is a leading statistician and data journalist known as the Founder and Editor of FiveThirtyEight, an award-winning political website. Silver is an election savant recognized 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. Silver is author of the bestselling book, The Signal and The Noise, and the co-host of the Risky Business podcast where he applies his renowned analytical framework to everything—from politics and poker to better decision-making in one’s personal life. A diehard baseball fan, he is also credited with developing PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), a statistical formula for predicting a player’s performance.
Nate Silver Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Founder and Editor in Chief
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Columnist
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Economic Consultant
Academic History
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B.A., Economics
538 & PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Silver began FiveThirtyEight as a personal blog for political polling, aggregation and analysis.
The accuracy of his 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.
Silver rose to prominence in 2008 after accurately predicting the results of the presidential election.
In 2008, he correctly predicted the results of the primaries and the presidential winner in 49 states. In 2012, he called 50 of 50 states.
BASEBALL & POKER
Silver originally gained his reputation as a baseball statistical analyst, where his mathematical models have been accurately forecasting baseball outcomes for years.
He is credited for developing PECOTA, a statistical formula for predicting a player’s performance.
Silver plays poker semi-professionally. He has $811,142 in total tournament earnings, including an 87th place finish in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event.
RECOGNITIONS
100 Most Creative People in Business, Fast Company
100 Most Influential People, Time
100 Agents of Change, Rolling Stone
BOOKS
His book, The Signal and The Noise, has been 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.”
His next book, On the Edge, has been named one of the most-anticipated books of 2024 by Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times.
Inspired by his experiences as a professional poker player, On the Edge takes us behind the scenes of casinos, venture capital firms, crypto networks, and into the minds of professional risk-takers to help us better understand navigating uncertainty in the 21st century.
MEDIA & PUBLICATIONS
Silver has been featured or quoted in Yahoo! Finance, The New York Times, Politico, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Business Insider.
He has written for ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Slate and The New York Times.
His work has been reported in such publications as Newsweek, Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair.