I feel like traditional pundits got pissed off because he kept wrecking their narratives. And he upset them further by turning political prognostication into something understandable by common readers -- instead of something only pointy-hatted political wizards could divine with the right amount of eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients.<p>Anyway: The New York Times should've worked harder to keep him. They should fire Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd and put those resources into the kind of analysis Nate Silver espoused. Y'know, the "actual journalism" kind.
On the data journalism mailing list, we've had a small discussion about how Nate could be replaced by any of the other data-minded journalists...it's not because his work was simple, but Silver himself has said that his analysis is straightforward and the math is accessible...the difference is that Silver gives a damn about context and analysis In a methodological way.<p>He definitely brings in good writing talents and a possibly unmatched inquisitiveness...but his methods and predictive analysis aren't irreplaceable. And yes, part of the draw is the brand that he's worked tirelessly to build...but this is a brand built on verifying results...I.e. being conclusively <i>right</i>....if the Times were to bring in another blogger who predicts the 2014 Congressional race to a T, and explains his/her methods and shows a real love for it, I'll subscribe to that blog and not give a whit about how many years of blogging they've done.<p>Contrast this with the irreplaceable Roger Ebert. He was incomparable as a writer, but his brand was built on something very subjective...and thus, once he's gone, it's hard to justify going back to RogerEbert.com, no matter how great of critics there are to replace him. Roger's brand is based more on long-built loyalty...Silver's brand is more based on making verifiable hypotheses and being correct...time and time again.
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).<p>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 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/paths-to-the-white-house.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/pa...</a> ?)<p>Visualizations don't seem to be Nate Silver's bailiwick, so that leaves me feeling a little disappointed to see him leaving.<p>Nate's a clever fellow though, I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with ESPN.
Meta comment: the institutionalized role of the "public editor" as a kind of quasi-independent internal advocate for the interests of the public has fascinated me for a while. They generally have no real power, but are given a platform and considerable independence, and are supposed to help hold newspapers to their stated interest in informing the public, with an expectation that they will be critical to some degree. So they can write posts like this, which normally would only come from outside sniping, but with better internal access to sources, and an officially sanctioned platform.<p>I've on occasion wondered if it would be beneficial for companies in other fields to adopt such a role. Could Google regain some trust and goodwill if it appointed a "public editor" with a suitably credible background, a degree of independence, and a mandate to advocate for the public interest?
It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been <i>extremely</i> 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 blog on that kind of anti-intellectualism in sports commentary (written by people who post-blog went on to write for the TV series <i>Parks and Recreation</i>): <a href="http://www.firejoemorgan.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.firejoemorgan.com/</a><p>Sign of a more general change?
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.<p>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.
Nate's work was practically the definition of "disruptive" when he started and it's been a joy to follow him over the years. As far as papers go I happen to like the NY Times, so I'm a bit sad to see him go. But I'll gladly follow him no matter where he is. This is definitely much more of a loss for the Times than for Nate.<p>I'll be curious to see what he says about why he left. It's very easy to imagine several reasons the he found it hard to work for the Times. It was very interesting to me to see how hostile some folks were to him during the 2012 election cycle. He obviously threatened the viability of a great deal of the(mostly useless) political punditry that we see. I think it's hard to separate which parts of that hostility were conscious reactions to a perceived threat and which parts were an unconscious reaction to ideas of how the news should work.<p>I'm sure Nate will do a great job with ESPN and I hope he likes it more than his time with the Times.
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.<p>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.<p><a href="http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/whyd_nate_silver_leave_the_times.php" rel="nofollow">http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/whyd_n...</a><p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/11/09/why-espn-is-the-worlds-most-valuable-media-property-and-worth-40-billion/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2012/11/09/why-e...</a>
Not surprised that political journalists at the time were so threatened by his work, since it renders what they do utterly useless, and entirely about manufacturing drama and conflict and personality narratives when the numbers tell a more complete and more accurate story.
I'm not sure if people understand that Nate Silver likes sports. Under the tweed blazer and spectacles, the guy loves baseball. There are very few topics of study with more data points than baseball. Besides, there are sports 100% of the time during the year, and a US national election once every 4 (Senate and house races are boring).<p>Seriously, it may not have been about money or fit. If someone came along and said that you could continue to code software and get paid to do it, but didn't have to work for CrushSoul, Inc., anymore AND it was in something you found insanely fun and interesting, wouldn't you do it?
I just read Silver's book "The Signal and the Noise" and I think this makes a lot of sense. Silver never was a political junkie, as all the NYT political journalists are. He was drawn into political statistical analysis almost by accident: he saw how "noisy" the political analysis were and knew that he could do something about it. In the book he clearly shows that baseball and poker are a lot more interesting subjects for him.
Nate Silver is unique because he's more rational than most people. This is why he can effectively use data to see things that the data revealed all along.<p>So it's no surprise to me that he'd find it difficult to work for an organization like the NY Times... The NY Times was not only complicit in the Iraq war, but came out strongly against Julian Assange through a series of horrible articles.<p>The purpose of the NY Times is to serve powerful interests and to prevent the embarrassment of powerful people.<p>Just skimming many of the regular op-ed contributors and editorial writing gives a window into the mentality of the paper. It's coasting on past glories and continually offering a message to readers that the world is full of illegitimacy and suffering outside the US.
The sports stats on ESPN / Politics on ABC angle is hard to argue against. I like to think though that corporate parent Disney is really looking at the bigger picture here; how Silver fits into its Marvel and Star Wars acquisitions.<p>Setting aside all creative considerations, the Avengers remains one of Hollywood's most impressive acts of longterm chutzpah, building individual franchises out of B-string characters helmed by way outta left-field director choices and bringing them all together in one film years down the line.<p>They could, of course, rest on their laurels and churn out a triptych of Avengers movies, each with their orbiting solo films. But Disney thinks bigger than that. Picture the scene in Avengers 3 (after the credits, natch) where Galactus looms into view over Mos Eisley, Hans Solo all wtf. Turns out the next three Star Wars films have all been building to an Avengers/Star Wars merger, dragging in its wake 15 tv series, 45 ancillary films and a trail of comics so large that collectors turn collectivists in order to purchase vast communal warehouses to store their collections.<p>As the credits roll on Star Wars/Avengers 3, we'd probably forgive Disney if the final card announced that they were following billg into philanthropy. They now account for 10% of US GDP and President Cory Booker is terrified that the gravy train is about to come off the rails and plunge the US economy into recession. BOOM. Audiences gasp. It's a post credits sequence. The camera tracks slowly through a darkened office, over a minimalist, uncluttered desk, towards a high-backed chair that's facing the wall. The phone rings. A hand reaches out to put it on speaker phone. We hear an efficient sounding secretary: "Connecting Mr Fett" and then a pause, the sound of breathing perhaps before Fett says "I'm sorry I failed you". The tension is palpable, as the chair slowly begins to rotate towards the camera. OMG. It's Nate Silver, wizard. "No no, Boba, it's all exactly as I planned it."<p>Cue the incorporation of 538 into the Star Wars/Avengers franchise, a development freighted so subtly in the accumulated oeuvre to date that only Nate Silver's super algorithm can track and maintain a consistent canon, further fuelling a blog empire.
There are so many more inputs and outcomes to model in sports than in politics, I'm not surprised that it's a more interesting subject matter for a statistician. He never seemed too much into the wonkier side of politics.<p>The science of predicting election outcomes may continue to be improved, but perhaps it's essentially solved in a way that sports prediction isn't.
I want to know details about how he constructs his models. At least in terms of what kinds of models he uses, what types of statistics are needed. Is it all "Bayesian"? I could not find much via google, anyone have pointers?
I wonder if the strengthening paywall at NYTimes was a factor.<p>I hit the ESPN 'premium' wall far less often than at NYTimes. 'Grantland' has been mentioned as a model for the Silver subbrand at ESPN; are any 'Grantland' stories premium-only?
Sell any NYT stock you are holding. Nate was one of the last honest things at the increasingly craven, frumpy NYT, where Occupy didn't merit coverage until the third month, and the Iraq war got the greased-rails treatment.<p>Don't forget who has forsaken their credibility. Never forget that. It is only by remembering who has lied that we avoid future lies.<p>Would you lend money to a bankrupt company? No? Why then do you read the NYT?