FiveThirtyEight: Data vs. the Gut

摘要

Most of us struggle to do well in one career, but Nate Silver has done very well in two. Silver, an economist by training, first succeeded as a sports analyst, using mathematical and statistical techniques to analyze the performance of baseball players. He applied his methods to U.S. electoral politics with his blog FiveThirtyEight; it was named for the total number of U.S. Senate and House seats when he started writing. Silver attracted attention in the 2008 election, when he predicted 49 out of 50 state presidential races. His blog was licensed by The New York Times in 2010. Silver's work went viral in 2012, when he called all the states in the presidential election and 31 of 33 Senate races.