Rephrase title to Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving and Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight. Construct is so important in English (even without the And being a Hence)
I wonder if TheRinger can afford him. My impression is that sites like 538, Grantland, Andscape, etc don’t make any money for Disney, so this isn’t too surprising.
Not making a judgment about his methods or not, but he was pretty accurate more than once; in 2008 he predicted 49/50 states correctly in the US presidential election, and in 2012 he predicted all 50 correctly. You might be right that he isn't as smart as people think, but "got lucky one year" is an exaggeration.
His approach is pretty sound, and straightforward if you listen to his podcast. Proper treatment of fat tails via student t distributions and correlated variables with good (subjective) judgement on polling quality.
I find that most people with negative views of Nate's approach are innumerate with regards to statistics. They don't criticize the model because they can't be bothered to understand it, or even basic probability, and certainly don't rank his performance vs other modelers which wouldn't require understanding the model.
> Nate Silver is a guy who got lucky one year, and managed to convince everyone he’s a genius.
Nate Silver is a guy who is very good at applying statistical modelling to a number of domains (including election analysis, where he basically revolutionized the field with everyone else doing poll-aggregate-based-prediction – which no one was previously – following in his footsteps, but mostly doing a worse job), but who morphed into another generic center-right Democratic political talking head. Whether that’s a structural demand of Disney that will go away now that he is leaving Disney or whether its what he feels his groove is now…will be interesting to see.
At FiveThirtyEight, their goal is to deliver high-quality quantitative analysis by utilizing record-level data. It's ironic that the type of comment you made is typically found on sports news websites that lacks the rigor and depth of a quality analysis.
> Silver was named one of The World's 100 Most Influential People by Time in 2009 after an election forecasting system he developed successfully predicted the outcomes in forty-nine of the fifty states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.[2] His subsequent election forecasting systems accurately predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with a high degree of accuracy, and - at the time - gave Presidential candidate Donald Trump the highest chance of success the day of the 2016 presidential election of reputable polls at the time.
Very curious where he goes, if it'll be back somewhere mainstream like NYT, or if it'll be independent on Substack, or somewhere else more alternative/indie like Vox.
Also a shame he can't take the FiveThirtyEight trademark with him. He can take his models, but not the brand. Still, his own name "Nate Silver" seems to have just as much recognition as "FiveThirtyEight" so he'll do just fine.
Somewhat related: The problem with Nate Silver and most others in this game is they don't treat the statistics they show as random variables. I want to see confidence intervals for all statistics. They just show 'Chance of winning is X" instead what they need to so is 'Change of winning is between X and Y'. It's such a simple change I'm shocked nobody does it including Nate Silver.
It's all what I call 'pop statistics' at this point and IMO hurts the public and democracy.
Ad based media/journalism is hopeless. Stuff behind a paywall maybe can survive if you cater to a specific audience (politics junkies, businesses). The vast majority of journalism though will be explicitly public relations and a defacto wing of an economic entity.
Commentary and analysis should be fine as professions for the highest levels. You can make a pretty good living out of subscriptions and even multiple millions out of a contract with a streaming service if you are an A-level analyst.
But reporting requires some level of infra-structure that is harder to bootstrap.
I don’t think reliable forecasting is gone. Nate Silver does not bring any new data to the table. However, he does have good models to translate a whole bunch of raw, often contradictory, data into something more representative of reality.
That being said, it’s not going anywhere. He will either self publish or join another firm. He might rejoin NYTimes for example.
I'm surprised to learn that Disney owned FiveThirtyEight and also that they kept Nate Silver afloat for that long. Dude's credibility was shattered after 2016 - a master of proving that getting high on your own fumes makes you high.
Seriously? What did he get wrong in 2016? Trump squeaked it out. 528 provides probabilities, and he expressed a very strong possibility of Trump winning with a 28% chance--much higher than almost everyone else including the Clinton campaign.
[+] [-] Scubabear68|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eshack94|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshl32532|2 years ago|reply
Nate Silver is 538.
[+] [-] hackernewds|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101b|2 years ago|reply
* https://twitter.com/natesilver538
:)
[+] [-] shusaku|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WheatMillington|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saghm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greesil|2 years ago|reply
I find that most people with negative views of Nate's approach are innumerate with regards to statistics. They don't criticize the model because they can't be bothered to understand it, or even basic probability, and certainly don't rank his performance vs other modelers which wouldn't require understanding the model.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|2 years ago|reply
Nate Silver is a guy who is very good at applying statistical modelling to a number of domains (including election analysis, where he basically revolutionized the field with everyone else doing poll-aggregate-based-prediction – which no one was previously – following in his footsteps, but mostly doing a worse job), but who morphed into another generic center-right Democratic political talking head. Whether that’s a structural demand of Disney that will go away now that he is leaving Disney or whether its what he feels his groove is now…will be interesting to see.
[+] [-] foxandmouse|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] test098|2 years ago|reply
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver
[+] [-] cyanydeez|2 years ago|reply
He found a trend and published it widely.
He changed the very thing he was studying. Because politics was already a statistical game, his original models failed to reproduce.
He clearly published a single result.
[+] [-] trc001|2 years ago|reply
But in his defense, I think he’s been more the victim of the secular decline in polling quality than anything else.
[+] [-] crazygringo|2 years ago|reply
Also a shame he can't take the FiveThirtyEight trademark with him. He can take his models, but not the brand. Still, his own name "Nate Silver" seems to have just as much recognition as "FiveThirtyEight" so he'll do just fine.
[+] [-] timbit42|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mempko|2 years ago|reply
It's all what I call 'pop statistics' at this point and IMO hurts the public and democracy.
[+] [-] kadoban|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aardvarkr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elzbardico|2 years ago|reply
But reporting requires some level of infra-structure that is harder to bootstrap.
[+] [-] greesil|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhaway84773|2 years ago|reply
That being said, it’s not going anywhere. He will either self publish or join another firm. He might rejoin NYTimes for example.
[+] [-] nwiswell|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinsaccount|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henriquez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schnable|2 years ago|reply