
Nate Silver Is a One-Man Traffic Machine for the Times - joejohnson
http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109714/nate-silver-the-times%E2%80%99-biggest-brand
======
jsm386
First - this is taken from [http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109714/nate-silver-
the-times%E...](http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109714/nate-silver-the-
times%E2%80%99-biggest-brand#)

Second (as is clear from source article but, once more): via
<https://twitter.com/JanetCoats/status/265925450696642561>

@fivethirtyeight did not account for 20% of NYT traffic; 20% of visitors to
NYT looked at 538. Big difference, my math-challenged friends.

~~~
mattangriffel
yes, but as @bdbreedlove mentions, "NYT must have some goddamn impressive
stickyness for that not to be a very similar number."

~~~
davidkatz
Many people check out a news site a few times a day, so it's hard to tell.
Either way, it's impressive.

------
tux1968
Man he's hated by a lot of the media. Whole diatribes are being written about
how it's impossible to boil an election down to numbers on a spreadsheet. It's
crazy that these are the same people that ask us to respect their opinions.
Not even a basic understanding of mathematical thinking.

~~~
Kylekramer
As a counterpoint, there is of lot of knee jerk rejection of any criticism of
Nate Silver. A lot of people protray anything that questions Nate Silver's
work as rejection of math.

~~~
wtallis
Well, if you just reject his conclusions without refuting any of his methods,
you haven't really made any argument against him. Those rejections _are_
pretty much all rejections of math in favor of wishful thinking. Mere
intuition can never be an effective argument against quantitative analysis.

------
mattgrice
At this rate, Nate Silver will be responsible for 50% of NYT traffic by next
week!

~~~
nostrademons
<http://xkcd.com/605/>

~~~
zalew
<http://xkcd.com/1130/>

------
jeremymims
FiveThirtyEight is actually leased by The New York Times.

Nate, brand, and all can leave the New York Times in the middle of 2013 once
his contract is up.

Depending on the election results, I wouldn't be surprised to see him ask for
a whole lot more money, jump to a new highest bidder, or go independent again.

~~~
untog
He's actually said that he doesn't intend to be doing this again in four years
time, but that FiveThirtyEight (the algorithm/brand) may continue without him.

~~~
shawn-butler
Probably wants to get back to poker.

~~~
brown9-2
Judging from what he wrote about poker in his book, doesn't seem likely -
talked about how much the game has changed and how he couldn't win with his
old strategies/style any more.

From the book I get the feeling he'd like to use his forecasting skills in
something that is a bit more demanding, he chalks up baseball and political
forecasts as falling in the 80/20 pareto rule.

------
kapilkale
Tangential: If you believe in Nate Silver, Intrade is underpricing the Barack
Obama contract by 20%+.

The contract that pays out $10 if Obama wins is currently trading at $6.70 per
contract, implying a 67% chance Obama wins vs Nate Silver's 90%+.

Unfortunately, Intrade and American gambling regulations don't play nice so
they don't accept US transactions. They also won't write you a margin account
so you actually need to have funds in their system to execute a trade today.

Hard to say which party is inaccurately estimating the outcome, but given the
regulatory hurdles around Intrade and the seemingly low volumes, I wouldn't be
surprised if they're off.

~~~
nostromo
Intrade is just one such place to bet. See others listed here:
[http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/politics-and-
election/us...](http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/politics-and-election/us-
presidential-election/winner)

SkyBet and Ladbrokers for example both have payouts closer to 538's forecast.

What is peculiar is that Intrade is the outlier. In a liquid market this
shouldn't happen because it allows for risk-free payouts. So something seems a
bit odd about Intrade.

It's possible the campaigns have caught on to Intrade's impact on the media
and will now step in when prices fall to much. </conspiracy>

~~~
usaar333
It isn't entirely liquid. It's a pain to get money into Intrade (esp. for an
American).

IEM (<http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/quotes/Pres12_quotes.html>) and Intrade were
up until yesterday off by 10%. Eventually things moved closer, but regulatory
hurdles in actually getting money in (+ limits on funding) really hurt
arbitrage opportunities.

~~~
WarDekar
It's really not difficult at all to get money into Intrade as an American. I
had wires show up day-of if I did it early enough or next-day in every other
case.

Also of note is that other betting markets were consistently higher than
Intrade was for all of the last 6 months basically- there are a lot of
theories as to why this may be, but it's regularly been 5%+ lower on Obama.

------
jpdoctor
Possibly relevant: <http://www.isnatesilverawitch.com/>

------
trhtrsh
And Mike Bostock, and the rest of the team!

I am still sad that fivethirtyeight got swallowed by NYT. fivethirtyeight has
a much better reputation in my mind, I would have loved to see it grow into
its own powerhouse.

~~~
ssharp
Maybe they would have done better on their own, but I was much happier to see
them get swallowed by the NYT rather than a site like the Huffington Post,
where the association would lose them much more goodwill.

The things that annoy me with the NYT are the monthly article limit that I
have to workaround and how painfully slow 538 is on my iPhone.

~~~
FreeKill
Yeah, it's such a terrible limitation too when all you need to do is remove
the variable, and it goes back to normal. I wonder how many customers that
inconvenience actually gets for the NYT?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not...

Regardless, they've landed more than 500k digital subscribers in the past 18
months. I'm sure there are a number of things at play here (bundling home
delivery and digital, including app subs in these numbers, etc), but that's
still pretty impressive.

Source: [http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/12/investors-like-new-york-
ti...](http://paidcontent.org/2012/10/12/investors-like-new-york-times-
paywall-progress/)

------
guan
That percentage is probably going to fall in the next few days.

~~~
jonknee
Along with the rest of their web traffic.

------
brianchu
And now we know why: Nate Silver correctly predicted _every state_ in the
presidential election (Electoral College). So much for the pundits who
criticized him, Rasmussen's party ID results that supposedly showed
Republicans with a commanding lead in Republican party identification, and
"UnSkewed" polls.

------
emmelaich
Slightly off-topic, but I found this was an interesting article on Nate
Silver:

[http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/04/tarnished-silver-
assessin...](http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/11/04/tarnished-silver-assessing-
the-new-king-of-stats/)

------
SkyMarshal
The accuracy of Nate and other quantitative modelers' forecasts depends on the
quality and accuracy of the polls they use. Drew Linzer of votamatic.org has
written some really good pieces the past few days examining poll accuracy and
the potential for "systemic polling failure":

<http://votamatic.org/can-we-trust-the-polls/>

<http://votamatic.org/another-look-at-survey-bias/>

<http://votamatic.org/pollsters-may-be-herding/>

~~~
corny
Nate's model accounts for presumed inaccuracy in the polls but it is partly
reliant in those polls' historical leanings. I think it would be more correct
to say that his model depends on the quantity and consistency of polls.

------
devindotcom
I don't really buy all this. 538 is a great resource and Nate Silver is a
smart guy doing interesting things with data, but millions and millions of
people were going to hit the NYT for election stuff regardless and 538 is the
site's big election brand right now. It's great for him and the times, but not
really remarkable.

------
RudySF
Heh.. I was just reading his blog before coming to HN.

