Nate Silver

Statistician, sabermetrician, psephologist, and author

Nate Silver is an American statistician, psephologist, and writer. Silver first gained public recognition for developing PECOTA, a system for forecasting the performance and career development of Major League Baseball players, which he sold to and then managed for Baseball Prospectus from 2003 to 2009. In 2007 Silver began to publish analyses and predictions related to the 2008 United States presidential election under the pseudonym “Poblano.” At first this work appeared on the political blog Daily Kos, but in March 2008 Silver established his own website, FiveThirtyEight.com. By summer of that year, he began to appear as an electoral and political analyst in national print, online, and cable news media. The accuracy of his November 2008 presidential election predictions – he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states – won Silver further attention and commendation. In April 2009 he was named one of The World’s 100 Most Influential People by TIME Magazine.  In 2010, Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog was licensed for publication by The New York Times.  Silver’s book, The Signal and the Noise, was published in September 2012. It subsequently reached The New York Times best seller list for nonfiction, and was named by Amazon.com as the #1 best book of 2012.  In 2012, Silver was one of the most successful major forecasters of the presidential election.  In the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, he correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.