Nate Silver

This article is about the author and statistician. For the American football player, see Nate Silver (quarterback). For the American filmmaker, see Nathan Silver.

Nate Silver
Silver playing poker at Manifest 2023, a forecasting conference, in Berkeley, California
Born
Nathaniel Read Silver

(1978-01-13) January 13, 1978 (age 46)[1]
East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Chicago (BA)
Occupation(s)Statistician, journalist
Years active2000–present
Known forPECOTA, FiveThirtyEight, Silver Bulletin
Websitenatesilver.net

Nathaniel Read Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, 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.[2] Since departing FiveThirtyEight, Silver has been publishing on his Substack blog Silver Bulletin[3] and serves as an advisor to Polymarket.[4]

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.[5] 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,[6] this was a higher estimate than any other scientific forecast.[7]

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.

  1. ^ "Nate Silver tweet". Twitter.com. August 13, 2010. Archived from the original on February 20, 2012. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference SemaforSilver was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Stein, Joel. "The World's Most Influential People – The 2009 TIME 100". TIME. Archived from the original on May 8, 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2009.
  6. ^ Silver, Nate (June 29, 2016). "2016 Election Forecast". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved November 7, 2023.
  7. ^ Katz, Josh (November 8, 2016). "Who Will Be President?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 21, 2021.