Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/business/media/nate-silver-blogger-for-new-york-times-is-to-join-espn-staff.html?_r=0

by jparishy • 13 years ago

72 62 13 years ago

josh2600• 13 years ago

I adore Nate Silvers work and the presentation for the NYTimes during the Presidential Elections was outstanding.

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.

clicks• 13 years ago

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. Fox News reports new findings, Reddit is a social bookmarking website.

stfu• 13 years ago

Still, most of Reddit's political frontpage posts are along the lines of "We can't have cute puppies on the frontpage anymore because Republicans just kill them and drink their blood".

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

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 FiveThirtyEight - and with the right-wing criticism of FiveThirtyEight being 'partisan' during the 2012 election cycle - is that Nate Silver is not himself an entirely left-wing person as much as people often thing. You'd have to dig pretty deep back into the archives of pre-NYT FiveThirtyEight to notice this, but he holds rather somewhat moderate or right-wing views on a number of issues).

cmsmith2• 13 years ago

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 'science' can't be trusted.

forsaken• 13 years ago

Did the NYTimes just break a story about one of their own employees leaving? The tone of the article is really interesting.

bthomas• 13 years ago

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...

apaprocki• 13 years ago

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.

jackschultz• 13 years ago

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 some real stats in written form from Silver like we saw when he was at the NYT.

crapshoot1014• 13 years ago

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.

rickdale• 13 years ago

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 Silver or Keith Olberman are women, but it definitely is aimed at the right audience and I look forward to this test run at 11 of what seems to be solid broadcasting.

On another note I think a Daily Show style program that brings in clips of announcers and ESPN and makes fun of them would be a great program. Just putting it out there.

newbie12• 13 years ago

Keith Olbermann is a dreadfully partisan and negative person. I can't believe they are bringing him back.

jmduke2• 13 years ago

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.

shawn-furyan3• 13 years ago

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.

mifeng• 13 years ago

Makes sense. As a political number cruncher, people are really only interested in your opinions once every four years. As a sports analyst, people care about what you write every day.

ssharp• 13 years ago

Silver seems to fit in with the Grantland side of ESPN, but also seems too big for Grantland. It will be interesting to see how he fits in on that network, given his more complicated analysis. He never seemed nearly as compelling on TV as he was in writing and as a fan of his work, I hope his TV presense improves as a result of this new deal. I think he's certainly earned more than a blog at the NYT.

markbao3• 13 years ago

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 etc. certainly play a big role, but I'm curious.

pulakm• 13 years ago

Nate Silver's background is in sports - that's really where his statistics-magic got started. I imagine sports is one of his passions, and he's now gotten to a point where he can combine that with his skill in statistics at the same scale as he was with politics.

ics• 13 years ago

For all the children who will get interested in statistics because of their favorite sport it's pretty cool. That might not be the answer you were looking for, but as someone who grew up collecting baseball cards obsessively I think it's great.

thejacenxpress• 13 years ago

I find it comical questioning his decision to choose sports (or anything for that matter) when he is famous and incredibly accurate for his predictions. While I agree sports may not be the best use of his ability, I'm sure he's done the math for choosing his next career step.

jbooth• 13 years ago

Yeah, he should build a social mobile webapp to help find your car keys instead.

lbrandy• 13 years ago

Can someone help me see the other side of this?

Your profile says you dropped out of college and are currently backpacking the world. Is that a waste of your intelligence? Why or why not?

markbao3• 13 years ago

In the same way that I only see Nate Silver's decision from my own perspective, I'm interested in why he might have picked to go to ESPN, because I'm sure that he has his own internal reason for doing so, like I do for traveling. So I'm interested in what that is and why he might have chosen it.

From my perspective, I don't think so. Gaining experience about how the world works and learning about other perspectives and cultures is (and has been) useful for expanding my world view.

Perhaps my question could have been more carefully worded.

reaganing• 13 years ago

He'll certainly continue his elections work for ESPN's sister network, ABC.

There might be more worthwhile things he could work on, but sports and politics are what interests him.

jfb• 13 years ago

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 people's lives; surely that alone lends it sufficient heft to be a defensible use of Silver's talent?

As for why, Silver got started in sabermetrics, and going back to working on sports stats is almost certainly because he likes it. And I imagine ESPN backed up the proverbial dump truck, too.

markbao3• 13 years ago

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.

sengstrom• 13 years ago

Because he is also a sports nut?

rdouble• 13 years ago

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

tgb• 13 years ago

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.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

it's a waste of Nate Silver's intelligence to work on something like sports

That's quite amusing considering that he became famous as a pro baseball statistician. I agree with other posters pointing that BB stats are actually a good way of getting kids interested in math. I'm not American but living here has caused me to fall in love with baseball and admire the number-crunching that goes with it. Every so often I see a parent and child at a game filling out a paper score card for the game together, which I think is just fabulous.

wglb2• 13 years ago

Wasn't sabermetrics his first love?

crapshoot1014• 13 years ago

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!

shawn-furyan3• 13 years ago

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)

blatherer2• 13 years ago

his major achievements to date have been in predicting player performance in baseball, an area which he has spent a large part of his life analyzing. Baseball analytics rewards attention to detail and persistence over technical brilliance/advanced statistical techniques. his special ability is really very domain specific, so it's not like we should expect him to be much more effective than other qualified people if he applied himself to different topics...

jak88• 13 years ago

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.

andyakb• 13 years ago

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.

the_economist• 13 years ago

I find it a bit surprising that he chose the role of working in media over working for a sports organization. The Memphis Grizzlies recently hired John Hollinger, who was ESPN's resident statistician the past few years, as their VP of basketball operations. Nate Silver likely could have a found an even better job. Perhaps not with the ability to dedicate large swaths of time to analyzing politics, though.

albertsun• 13 years ago

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.

antidaily• 13 years ago

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

jayzalowitz• 13 years ago

Albert! How are you!

ianb• 13 years ago

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"?

cmsmith2• 13 years ago

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.

jmduke2• 13 years ago

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.)

T-hawk• 13 years ago

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.

True, but what Nate Silver brings to the table goes far beyond that. Polls are inaccurate. His statistical models adjust for all sorts of information you don't get from polling. Like which way undecideds will swing late (towards the incumbent) or sampling bias (poll respondents lean Republican) or even outright lying ("sure I'd vote for a black president", then doesn't in the privacy of the voting booth.) That's what set Silver's predictions far above all others in accuracy, and how he correctly captured the election swinging decisively for Obama as hardly anyone else foresaw.

talloaktrees• 13 years ago

I guess we'll see some major moneyball stuff from him?

homosaur• 13 years ago

I'm less annoyed that Silver is going to work on trivial stuff and more annoyed that he's doing it for ESPN, who is doing everything possible to make sports coverage as dumb as possible.

I mean what the hell is Silver going to do there? Tell us the % of time Skip Bayless trolls about LeBron or the probability of Tebow related coverage in the upcoming SportsCenter?

crapshoot1014• 13 years ago

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.

mccolin• 13 years ago

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.

crapshoot1014• 13 years ago

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?

shawn-furyan3• 13 years ago

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

wglb2• 13 years ago

They used to say "Go West, young man", but today i think the wise ones are saying "Go Stats, young man/woman".

alohahacker• 13 years ago

If Nate or anyone could program a statistically accurate sports predictor model there would be huge potential in this as far as sports betting goes.

The guys that make millions in large part use their own software.

I used a simple piece of hardware last year for college football season that was suprisingly accurate. I weighted my own opinion most heavily but would use the software to confirm my picks. If both ways checked out, I would place a bet.

Never had a losing week last year and would usually pocket a couple thousand in profit a week. Of course there was alot of lucky but a large part of my success was due to the statistical software I was using.

patrickk• 13 years ago

If Nate or anyone could program a statistically accurate sports predictor model there would be huge potential in this as far as sports betting goes.

Absolutely.

The guys that make millions in large part use their own software.

I was fascinated reading about Bob Haralabos' incredible tracking of basketball games: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/4974/following-up...

I used a simple piece of hardware last year for college football season that was suprisingly accurate. I weighted my own opinion most heavily but would use the software to confirm my picks. If both ways checked out, I would place a bet.

Care to elaborate (without giving away your secret sauce?) I love reading about this stuff.

I try to approach soccer betting in a similar fashion (it's trickier than US sports in some ways, as soccer doesn't lend itself to stats as easily as say baseball and American football). See a comment of mine on reddit here, with tons of resources:

http://www.reddit.com/r/SoccerBetting/comments/15dcao/what_v...

pjmorris• 13 years ago

If you were a sports geek and a numbers geek, wouldn't your dream job be more like ESPN rather than the NYT?

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff

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