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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

#51

Post by wavefunction »

markbao wrote: post #33
jfb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Silver is very good at generating statistical analyses, as well as determining which set of stats matter and ignoring the ones that don't, imo.

It's the second skill that sets him apart from a run-of-the mill statistician.

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

#52

Post by ianb »

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.

To preface, this might sound snarky or sarcastic, but ignore that, this is not intended to be a rhetorical question:

What about the interpretation of sports data would qualify as "incredible things"?

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

#53

Post by crapshoot101 »

mccolin wrote: post #47
crapshoot101 wrote: post #46

This is fascinating. To out-hipster myself, I've been a BP subscriber since way back when Nate was famous for the PECOTA model - really bringing a comp engine to baseball to predict results / outcomes, etc etc. ESPN just seems strange for him, unless they threw a crazy amount of money - he loses out in brand prestige of going from NYT to them, so I have to assume the financials were a major factor.

I am also a longtime fan of his from his BP days. Here's to hoping ESPN makes great use of his skills. Buried as a contributor to a late night program seems, on the surface, like a situation ripe for underutilization of his talents.

What's funny is that back in the old BP days, you could still argue most of the interesting work in baseball / statistics was being done in the public domain working of standardized data sets - whether it was DIPS via Voros McCracken, or Tom Tango's work, or that of MGL / some of the early BP guys in the past few years. Now, since we're pretty good at capturing offensive value, the really interesting stuff is being done a) on the predictive side and b) on the defensive side. The latter in particular makes use of propeitary data sets like some of the Baseball Info Solutions stuff or Pitch FX's advanced DB's - making it harder for a young analyst who wants to break into baseball to pull a Voros. Moreover, ESPN can certainly afford those resources, but I doubt that the goal is going to be to do groundbreaking stuff anymore - I think it would be a role similar to Hollinger. But given the ESPN "analysts" (and I use the term loosely) consist of idiots like John Kruk, Silver's influence seems as if it will be limited.

McColin, are you an old Baseball Primer / BTF guy as well?

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

#54

Post by crapshoot101 »

wglb wrote: post #49
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…

Wasn't sabermetrics his first love?

Yup. Old BP contributor who developed PECOTA back in the day. I admit I thought that the overlap between Baseball Prospectus type sabremetric nerds and HN types would be limited - those genres of geekdom rarely interact!

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

#55

Post by crapshoot101 »

jackschultz wrote: post #4

Interesting move. ESPN actually has a seemingly forward attitude to this sort of "technical" info in sports. They have a regular segment called "Sports Science" where they bring in athletes and hook them up to monitors and measure their output. Unfortunately, this just skims the surface in terms of the actual science since there are no write-ups or documentation on how the data was collected. Hopefully we can get som…

They really don't actually. The best stuff is from independent analysts, or guys like Fangraphs or Tom Tango or MGL. ESPN throws some lipservice to this crowd because some hard-core fans like myself are sabr-types, but the brunt of their coverage is aimed at the "DEREK JETER KNOWS HOW TO WIN BECAUSE HE's A VETERAN" Crowd.

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

#56

Post by shawn-furyan »

crapshoot101 wrote: post #46

This is fascinating. To out-hipster myself, I've been a BP subscriber since way back when Nate was famous for the PECOTA model - really bringing a comp engine to baseball to predict results / outcomes, etc etc. ESPN just seems strange for him, unless they threw a crazy amount of money - he loses out in brand prestige of going from NYT to them, so I have to assume the financials were a major factor.

Dean Oliver works at ESPN now. He's considered the Bill James of Basketball stats[1], though he doesn't focus exclusively on that sport.

Certainly there is a lot of ludditism at ESPN concerning statistical analysis, but you might say that their building a prestigious niche of high minded sports analysis. Also, an affiliation with ESPN, I think reaches more sports fans than an affiliation with the NYT, so if he's looking to switch focus to sports, then that's a pretty compelling reason too.

[1] One example: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/posts.html?pg=3

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

#57

Post by Tuna-Fish »

chimeracoder wrote: post #7
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…

> Funny you say that, as Reddit had majorly sided with Nate Silver way before election day. Be that as it may, Nate Silver is actually thoughtful, articulate, and well-reasoned - three words which do not describe /r/politics, etc. It's not just a matter of which opinions one holds; it's a matter of how intelligently one expresses them and defends them with data and evidence. (The irony with Reddit's love of FiveThirt…

And Reddit is not nearly as left-wing as you think. It's populated by tens of millions of people now, all around the political spectrum. If anything, they tend to swing left on social policy issues, but they are not far off from the national average in economic policy. The Obama love last election had a lot more to do with the lack of any reasonable republican candidate than it did with the political makeup of Reddit. Remember, Ron Paul actually received serious support from Reddit.

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

#58

Post by shawn-furyan »

jmduke wrote: post #42
rickdale wrote: post #11

ESPN has come a long way since 2012 Super Bowl production where they had Herm Edwards explaining the Patriots offense to 2 toddlers who couldn't stand in the same place for a second. It was probably the worst segment in ESPN history. I really like this move though because lately a lot of ESPN women seemed to have moved to CBS or NBC ie Rachel Nichols, Erin Andrews, Michelle Beadle and I am sure more. Not that Nate Si…

During the NBA season, ESPN's commentary and analysis paled in comparison to TNT. I think this is partially by design -- the best analysts don't make for the biggest audiences -- but I think ESPN is understanding that the landscape is more competitive than they thought. I'm looking forward to Silver working with Simmons. His column would fit it quite nicely at Grantland.

I think Bill Simmons is entertaining, but I'm not sure that he's great to pair with a real statistician. He makes a million assertions a minute. I guess Simmons has done a decent job of interviewing statistical experts at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, but I think he's better by himself or with a group of guys that don't need verification to let his assertions stand in the conversation.

I do think that the Henry Abbott + John Hollinger[1] dynamic was good since Abbott is more of a curious amateur type and willing to withhold judgement until the facts come in. But if Silver is a baseball guy (some of the stuff that Silver's done on basketball isn't very good, I don't think he's really immersed in the sport), then I wouldn't necessarily expect the paths of those two guys to cross much.

[1] Though I have reservations about some of Hollinger's work, especially PER, which is just a linear weights metric with weights apparently chosen to coincide with conventional wisdom on the value of players. There are superior player evaluation metrics, but PER is very marketable to normal fans. Hollinger does seem to know his stuff though, and he's done a great job in Memphis thus far. It's just unfortunate that he got famous for a ho-hum metric.

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

#59

Post by shawn-furyan »

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…

One thing to consider is that Nate Silver having a big audience is almost certainly a good thing in the world. It's less important what he works on and more important that he's able to spread some small measure of statistical fluency to as many people as possible. He's a good writer, and is able to convey confusing aspects of statistical analysis to lay people. There are academics doing academic-y things in the shadows, and there will be for the foreseeable future. Silver, though can maximize the impact of his particular gifts by increasing his audience and chipping away at the enormous levels of statistical ignorance in the world.

In fact, there's a great tradition of this in the sciences. In terms of popularizing science, Nate Silver is a kindred of people like Carl Sagan (Cosmos), Steven Hawking (A Brief History of Time), Randall Munroe (XKCD), as well as Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (MythBusters)

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

#60

Post by seferphier »

apaprocki wrote: post #10
bthomas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought this was an interesting dynamic too. The Boston Globe recently had a front page article about who is buying the Boston Globe: http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/27/least-five-gr...

Each news organization is different. Bloomberg News editorial policy is to not cover anything involving the company -- even if a story appears in every other source, positive or negative, it's still off limits.

no wonder why mr.bloomberg never appears in their own billionaire list. makes the rankings inaccurate though.
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