Nate Silver

Because Influencing Election Results Is Weird

I hope people don’t take the forecasts too seriously. You’d rather have an experiment where you record it off from the actual voters, in a sense, but we’ll see. If it gets really weird in 2014, in 2016, then maybe I’ll stop doing it. I don’t want to influence the democratic process in a negative way.

– Nate Silver, to a Washington University audience, suggests that he might stop writing the FiveThirtyEight blog if it starts to influence election results

Nate Silver Picks the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl (Awaiting Karl Rove Guess)

Kara Swisher in Media on February 2 at 1:27 pm PT

This time, it’s personal.

Voices

Illusions of Expertise: Why Marketers Should Start Listening to Data

Omar Tawakol, co-founder and CEO, BlueKai in Voices on January 15 at 12:30 pm PT

Armed with mountains of data, most experts put in charge of predicting outcomes still can’t come up with accurate answers.

Election Night Was a Second Screen Extravaganza

Peter Kafka in Media on November 15, 2012 at 12:39 pm PT

Did you watch the returns with a remote in one hand and an iPhone in another? You had lots of company.

Ten Things About Me

21 Things About Malcolm Gladwell

Beth Callaghan in Ten Things About Me on November 9, 2012 at 1:45 pm PT

BlackBerry. Definitely BlackBerry.

News Byte

Nate Silver Wears a Wizard’s Hat at Dinner

Peter Kafka in Media on November 8, 2012 at 5:59 pm PT

So says New York Times Web producer Eric Owles, who just posted this image to Instagram. Owles describes the other winner of Tuesday’s election as “disappointingly sober.” Wong, by the way, describes itself as an “Asian” restaurant. It’s very good.