Nate Silver, 34-year-old statistician and creator of the FiveThirtyEight election blog has been thrust into temporary stardom due to his correct predictions of the past 2012 presidential election. Silver correctly predicted the presidential candidate for all 50 states and most of the Senate as well. Silver appeared on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” twice and humbly attributed his success to simple logic and mathematics. Below is a clip of said interview:
In reference to our in-class discussion regarding this very same thing, I found it interesting to stumble upon an article referencing the exact same topic. Jon Stewart accredited Silver with the revamping of the image of arithmetic, going as far as to deem it “sexy”. Silver appreciates the current critical acclaim and is basking in it as much as he can. He firmly believes, though, that he will never reveal his code or methods for accounting the results of the election and is even surer that a new means for calculating said results must be created. “You don't want to influence the same system you are trying to forecast," Silver said in an interview with Yahoo. Provided below is a video on how Nate Silver came to certain conclusions in his predictions and what he predicts for the future:
Overall, I feel as though the rise of Nate Silver as a symbol in America could not be a bad thing. Though the political process caused his track to fame, his underlined focus was on the mathematics that went into his projections. A figurehead like Silver could create a wave of individuals who choose to concentrate on the wonders of arithmetic due to the success of Nate Silver. All in all, nothing negative could come from being able to logically come to such conclusions and be able to confidently stand behind them. More power to him.
Listed below is a link to the infamous website that has skyrocketed Nate Silver’s career:
I find that Nate Silver's swift rise to fame is not only driven by his clear love for complex algorithms but also for his need to be right in such a case. The closer he comes to being correct the more reliable his forecasts become. With predictable forecasts comes political attention and ultimately money. This is how he makes his money, by being within a few percentage points of the correct outcome. Nate Silver is simply using what he's got (an extremely accurate forecasting model) to get that he wants (wealth and validity).
ReplyDeleteThis article is a great example of Nate's work ethic and accuracy. He predicted the outcome of the election correctly.
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