Can Big Data Help Nate Silver Reinvent Journalism? #SXSW

By Stephen Fishman, CMS Wire, March 16, 2014   
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Big Data Rock Star

For those who don’t know, Nate Silver is is quite possibly the Andy Warhol that big data has been looking for. Silver emerged from obscurity when he created the Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm (PECOTA), which is used for evaluating and forecasting the development of baseball players. He later sold it to Baseball Prospectus.

Not satisfied with a sports exclusive lens, Silver set his sights on politics and proceeded to rewrite the rules of the narrative driven political landscape, using quantitative conclusions grounded in better data modeling and statistical techniques. Silver stood alone in 2007 when he, under the pseudonym of “poblano”, contradicted exit polling numbers and correctly predicted the primary outcomes in both Indiana and North Carolina.

In the 2008 elections, Silver correctly predicted voter outcomes in 49 of 50 states as well as the winners of all 35 US senate races. Since then, while not writing the FiveThirtyEight political blog for the New York Times, Silver has been touring the country doing interviews with almost every major media outlet about his “Moneyball” like approach to politics and voter outcomes. In 2012, Silver scored a perfect 50 for 50 in his predictions of state outcomes in the presidential election and was 31 for 33 in senate races.

FiveThirtyEight is relaunching on March 17 and has big ambitions in terms of both journalistic presence and integrity. And with a new partnership with ESPN, Silver is in a good position to move beyond sports and politics and into science, lifestyle and economics.

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