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Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#31

Post by mjn »

recusancy wrote: post #19
mjn wrote: post #8

It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been extremely negative on "stats geeks", and favored narrative explanations, along with factors like "grit" and "determination" and that kind of thing. Silver's own former work in sabermetrics was a frequent target of pot-shots from ESPN commentators for years. There used to be a bl…

You don't watch much sports do you? Sports is all about stats.

More trivia than stats. That is a distinction Silver was big on in his first incarnation as sports statistician, and he got huge pushback from it. Nobody in traditional baseball commentary wanted to talk about VORP, say, and they certainly didn't want to root their commentary in solid statistical analysis. Traditional baseball use of statistics (I mainly follow baseball) has been very much of the trivia variety: this is the first time a right-handed batter has has two hits in the same inning against a left-handed pitcher while the wind is between 12mph and 15mph on a Tuesday. Not so much about backing up your opinions with solid predictive statistics.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#32

Post by mjn »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #24
mjn wrote: post #8

It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been extremely negative on "stats geeks", and favored narrative explanations, along with factors like "grit" and "determination" and that kind of thing. Silver's own former work in sabermetrics was a frequent target of pot-shots from ESPN commentators for years. There used to be a bl…

Traditionally, but not recently. Sports has been very focused on statistics for at least the last decade, probably longer. Most large sports organizations have dedicated statistics departments and make many of their decisions based on the same.

That's a good point. I was thinking more about sports commentary, rather than what happens in the teams themselves, but it's true that teams have been all over statistics for years. I do think commentators, perhaps conscious of their role as public faces of an entertainment product, have been more resistant to statistics-driven commentary, and have instead played up horse-race type narratives.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#33

Post by wilfra »

jaggederest wrote: post #3

I still think it's funny that the Times framed him joining them as being a huge win for him, lending him credibility, etc. The benefit to Silver was certainly money, but it was really more about the Times joining Silver than vice versa, in terms of political analysis. I'm not at all surprised he moved on - I suspect that they expected him to be grateful, when the reverse would have been more reasonable.

At the time it was a win for him. It gave him credibility, a steady paycheck and guaranteed lasting exposure at a time when he could have easily faded into obscurity after the 08 elections were over.

Back then he was just a novelty with a website it looked like his 15 year old cousin built for him one weekend. And one who was going to find it very challenging to remain relevant until the next election cycle.

Now he's arguably outgrown them, having become a household name to anybody who follows politics closely, become a TV personality etc - but lets not rewrite history. He definitely stood on their shoulders to get where he is today, at least for the first year or two.

And this is all coming from a pretty huge fan.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#34

Post by RockyMcNuts »

ESPN has a ton of money (about $4.69/month from every cable subscriber in the country whether they watch sports or not, $10b total revenue), a big audience, and they could put him on ABC. They made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Sounds like the NYT did everything they could to keep him, but against money and mass audience, prestige only takes you so far, especially when a stodgy old guard is fighting a rear guard action against you.

http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/whyd_n...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/11/09/why-e...

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#35

Post by robrenaud »

jessriedel wrote: post #27
mjn wrote: post #8

It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been extremely negative on "stats geeks", and favored narrative explanations, along with factors like "grit" and "determination" and that kind of thing. Silver's own former work in sabermetrics was a frequent target of pot-shots from ESPN commentators for years. There used to be a bl…

Readers prefer reading human narratives over rational analysis in all areas, whether sports or politics. It's not even really about a distaste for mathematical analysis so much as a distaste for cold rationality in general. There's lots of fascinating strategy involved with blocking schemes in American football ("if I step here, he'll step here, so instead I move this way...") that are analytical but not numerical. W…

Are you sure the blocking stuff has no numerical solution or reasonable analysis?

I would not be surprised if the "how to block" mini-game could be productively analyzed in a game theoretic fashion in terms of a few discrete tactics and empirical success probabilities given the tactics choices. From that data, you can compute equilibrium mixed strategies for both the offensive and defensive positions. This was kind of analysis was by economists for the determining equilibrium strategies for making/defending penalty kicks. http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/courses/game-theor...

Of course, the blocking in American football situation is much harder to analyze/collect data for, because it's not just a 1 on 1 successfully blocked or not, but rather the outcome of the play that matters.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#36

Post by nknighthb »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #20
nknighthb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Public editor" is basically a particular incarnation of ombudsman. One thing common to ombudsman roles is that they're powerless and routinely ignored. They're the equivalent of "We are taking this seriously.", a meaningless gesture designed to distract and obfuscate. The people who take such roles are simply pawns.

I think this is a needlessly cynical take on the issue, especially in the context of a news disseminating organization like the NYT. The purpose of the public editor is not necessarily to change anything, but to give some insight into the machinery of the news process. Unlike ombudspersons (yeah, went there), they do not need to be heeded to be effective at their role, which is to give the audience context to evaluat…

The New York Times Public Editor position was explicitly referred to by the New York Times as an ombudsman[1][2], and it was created in response to a massive ethics scandal. The role has nothing to do with giving the public "context".

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/business/media/31PAPE.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/27/us/the-times-chooses-veter...

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#37

Post by kmfrk »

mjn wrote: post #8

It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been extremely negative on "stats geeks", and favored narrative explanations, along with factors like "grit" and "determination" and that kind of thing. Silver's own former work in sabermetrics was a frequent target of pot-shots from ESPN commentators for years. There used to be a bl…

Silver will work for ESPN who own ventures like Grantland.

ESPN is owned by Disney who own ABC, on which Silver will sometimes appear to do some political commentary.

It's much more of a package deal than the vertical venture a lot of people make it sound like.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#38

Post by diego_moita »

mjn wrote: post #8

It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been extremely negative on "stats geeks", and favored narrative explanations, along with factors like "grit" and "determination" and that kind of thing. Silver's own former work in sabermetrics was a frequent target of pot-shots from ESPN commentators for years. There used to be a bl…

You should read Silver's book; "The Signal and the Noise". There he reveals that he was a poker and baseball geek long before and much more than a political analyst. In the book he actually shows respects for both views.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#39

Post by kmfrk »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #14

I was skeptical when Nate Silver first got picked up by the NY Times; I was an avid follower of his site when it was independent (during campaign years). But, the Times really did a great job of supporting his work. The infographics and visualizations and interactive graphs that they produced -- typically with D3.js, which was cool to see -- were really second-to-none. (Who can forget http://www.nytimes.com/interacti…

He's been given the authority to do a lot of hiring, so I would honestly be surprised, if he didn't go on to hire some d3.js boffins.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#40

Post by jamesaguilar »

mjn wrote: post #32
jamesaguilar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, but not recently. Sports has been very focused on statistics for at least the last decade, probably longer. Most large sports organizations have dedicated statistics departments and make many of their decisions based on the same.

That's a good point. I was thinking more about sports commentary , rather than what happens in the teams themselves, but it's true that teams have been all over statistics for years. I do think commentators, perhaps conscious of their role as public faces of an entertainment product, have been more resistant to statistics-driven commentary, and have instead played up horse-race type narratives.

To be fair, when you're watching the game, horse-race commentary is just straight up more fun to hear. I love hearing a radio announcer just get excited about what's happening. However, even live, they do throw in some statistics. Admittedly, these are the sort of post-hoc statistics that aren't good for anything (e.g. "they win 90% of their away games that fall on Friday").

Offline, fans of some sports are almost exclusively about statistics and numbers. Baseball is famous for this.

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