
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight Blog Is to Join ESPN Staff - jparishy
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/business/media/nate-silver-blogger-for-new-york-times-is-to-join-espn-staff.html?_r=0
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cmsmith
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.

~~~
jmduke
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.)

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

~~~
bthomas
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...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/06/27/least-five-groups-
submit-bids-buy-the-boston-globe/SRZ5zPhO6cPwg4LlL9pGzK/story.html)

~~~
apaprocki
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.

~~~
seferphier
no wonder why mr.bloomberg never appears in their own billionaire list. makes
the rankings inaccurate though.

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crapshoot101
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
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.

~~~
crapshoot101
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?

~~~
blatherer
what are the best publicly available sources of baseball data?

------
josh2600
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
> 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.

~~~
chimeracoder
> 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).

~~~
_delirium
I agree Silver is relatively moderate, but FiveThirtyEight did more or less
grow out of DailyKos [1], so it's not a huge stretch to suggest he personally
has a clear preference for one or the other side of the American political
spectrum. It's not like he also had a blog on the right-wing equivalents of
DailyKos, like FreeRepublic or RedState.

[1] For a year or so before he launched fivethirtyeight.com as an independent
site, he posted data-driven election analysis, among other things, at
[http://www.dailykos.com/blog/poblano](http://www.dailykos.com/blog/poblano)

~~~
sardonicbryan
It could also be because the Daily Kos' founder also cofounded SB Nation, one
of the larger networks of sports blogs that are well regarded in the baseball
analytics community, so it's likely that Silver had some connection/comfort
with DailyKos.

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albertsun
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.

~~~
ianb
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"?

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jak88
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
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.

------
mifeng
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.

------
rickdale
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.

~~~
jmduke
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-furyan
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.

------
alohahacker
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
> 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...](http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/4974/following-up-with-
haralabos-voulgaris)

> 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...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SoccerBetting/comments/15dcao/what_variables_do_you_consider_for_football/)

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jackschultz
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.

~~~
crapshoot101
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.

------
the_economist
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.

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markbao
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.

~~~
jfb
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.

~~~
markbao
> _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.

~~~
wavefunction
Silver is very good at generating statistical analyses, as well as determining
which set of stats matter and ignoring the ones that don't, imo.

It's the second skill that sets him apart from a run-of-the mill statistician.

------
ssharp
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.

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homosaur
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?

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

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

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

