Nate Silver has been called a “spreadsheet psychic” and “number-crunching prodigy” by the media for his ability to use statistics to reveal insights that are truly good predictors of outcomes, in various fields. He comes out of the world of baseball statistics, where he created PECOTA, short for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, which evaluates and predicts player performance in baseball.
During the 2008 presidential election primaries, he turned his sights and his amazing predictive abilities and forecasting models to the game of politics and current events – with incredible results: he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states. His analysis and work gained ample media attention through his website, FiveThirtyEight.com.
