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Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

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Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#31

Post by rdouble »

markbao wrote: post #15

I think it's a waste of Nate Silver's intelligence to work on something like sports , when there are many other bigger problems to potentially be solved with the help of statistics and prediction. Why might ESPN be a good option for him? Can someone help me see the other side of this? It's totally his decision to make, and I'm sure he's looked at his options rationally, and life circumstances and past experience and…

Sports are what he did before politics. He's returning to his specialty. Sports and gambling are very typical inspirations for career statisticians.

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#32

Post by tgb »

markbao wrote: post #15

I think it's a waste of Nate Silver's intelligence to work on something like sports , when there are many other bigger problems to potentially be solved with the help of statistics and prediction. Why might ESPN be a good option for him? Can someone help me see the other side of this? It's totally his decision to make, and I'm sure he's looked at his options rationally, and life circumstances and past experience and…

Nate Silver's intelligence is much better spent being a spokesman for statistics than it is on doing statistics. Not that I can critique his statistics - but he's certainly not alone in being able to do standard Bayesian probability and apply it to elections or sports. What he is alone at (so far) is in capturing people's attention and getting many, many more people to think about stats and how it relates to real things than would normal do.

He is a replaceable statistician. He is a complete unique spokesman.

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#33

Post by markbao »

jfb wrote: post #25
markbao wrote: post #15

I think it's a waste of Nate Silver's intelligence to work on something like sports , when there are many other bigger problems to potentially be solved with the help of statistics and prediction. Why might ESPN be a good option for him? Can someone help me see the other side of this? It's totally his decision to make, and I'm sure he's looked at his options rationally, and life circumstances and past experience and…

Nate Silver isn't some weird Neo like figure who strides alone dispensing Truth via a college-level understanding of statistics -- his brand of analysis is not unique or even particularly remarkable save that it is rare in the mainstream media. Too, it's a bit rich to be badmouthing sports on Hacker News , home of perhaps the most solipsistic conversations on the internet. Sports is a very important part of many peop…

> his brand of analysis is not unique or even particularly remarkable save that it is rare in the mainstream media.

Ah, so he's good, but it seems like he's doing something totally unique because of the bias that he gets mainstream media attention and most other statisticians don't?

> Sports is a very important part of many people's lives; surely that alone lends it sufficient heft to be a defensible use of Silver's talent?

Sure does.

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#34

Post by andyakb »

jak88 wrote: post #26

I think that the folks questioning the reasoning/wisdom of Nate's move to ESPN are missing something ... Think of this not as a deal with ESPN but a deal with Disney, the parent company. It's not just Nate able to do more sports. Disney enables 538 to get its content onto multiple "channels" - sports (ESPN), news (ABC), A&E - on cable, radio, books with much greater international exposure.

Exactly. Major elections arre infrequent. Nate got his start with sports. Let him do sports the majority of the time, but when elections come around, give him an outlet to do politics as well. Disney is a pefect fit.

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#36

Post by antidaily »

albertsun wrote: post #35

While I'm sad that Nate Silver is leaving the Times (I work there), I'm also really excited to see what he's going to be able to do with all the sports data that ESPN has. I'm expecting incredible things to come.

Well hold on... Karl Rove refuses to concede that he's actually left.

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#37

Post by cmsmith »

Possible reasons for this move:

1) People only care about election handicapping every 4 (or 2) years in the US.

2) Nate Silver especially made political predictions look really easy (in comparison to the partisan clowns who populate cable news). The outcome you're trying to predict is how people will vote, and you're free to go and ask them how they will vote.

Compare to sports where (1) you have sporting events all the time and (2) you are trying to predict something that is much more uncertain. For someone who is in to sports, I could easily see that being much more interesting.

The counter to this is that politics is (arguably) more important, and is associated with more fame.

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#39

Post by jmduke »

cmsmith wrote: post #37

Possible reasons for this move: 1) People only care about election handicapping every 4 (or 2) years in the US. 2) Nate Silver especially made political predictions look really easy (in comparison to the partisan clowns who populate cable news). The outcome you're trying to predict is how people will vote, and you're free to go and ask them how they will vote. Compare to sports where (1) you have sporting events all…

3) Nate Silver really, really likes sports.

He got his start doing sabermetrics (statistics for baseball) and, after reading his book and his column, it honestly seems like he's a lot more passionate about sports than politics.

(I don't think this conflicts with your point about sports' immediacy and uncertainty.)

Re: Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

#40

Post by flomo »

cmsmith wrote: post #20
clicks wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do hope they bring him back for future major Elections. His commentary is a delightful respite from the ultra-polarized world of Reddit and Fox News. Funny you say that, as Reddit had majorly sided with Nate Silver way before election day. Almost every post of his was frontpaged when political campaigns were in full swing. It's also important to note that Fox News is not in the same category that Reddit is in. Fo…

I think it's important to note that they sided with him while he was saying what they wanted to hear. Reddit/MSNBC had it easy this past election, because they could say what they could be optimistic and listen to the experts at the same time. My disillusionment with political journalism will be fully validated during the next election won by Republicans, when Fox is on the side of 'science' and MSNBC says that 'scie…

For example, during the 2010 midterm elections, there were a number of Democrats arguing "Silver is wrong this time because (random political reasons)", which is exactly what the Republicans were doing in 2012.

Winning an election requires enthusiasm and people willing to volunteer their personal efforts, so partisan activists dismissing contradictory polling data should be expected.

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