Our "Poblano" (aka Nate Silver) is a star

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Monday November 10, 2008 · 2:21 AM PST

2008/11/10 · 02:21

I know this was posted in Kula's morning wrap-up, but I figured it deserved a diary referral of its own since the story might have gotten overlooked in the middle of that diary and a search failed to turn up any other mentions. Our Favorite Son, who used to post diaries here under the name "Poblano," is the subject of a feature story in the New York Times. The story's conceit is that, like everyone else, Nate Silver predicted Obama's victory -- except Nate had done so back in March.

Nate came out of the closest -- so to speak -- during the primaries when he opened his own site, fivethirtyeight.com. It's been a huge, huge success.

Since then, Nate been interviewed in a number of places, both print and TV (and probably radio for all I know). On Election Night he was Dan Rather's numbers analyst on HDNet.

For those unfamiliar with the Nate Silver Story, he is the editor of Baseball Prospectus, a statistics site. Before putting his considerable skills into predicting elections, Nate was already a legend in the baseball world because he created PECOTA, a reliable model for predicting how players will perform. Nate showed his chops when he was about the only baseball observer who predicted that the Tampa Bay Rays would have a breakthrough year with a prognostication that the perennialdoormats would win 90 games. They won 97 and made it to the World Series.

According to today's Times story, Nate was something of a wonk at a pretty young age.

By kindergarten, he could multiply two-digit numbers in his head. By 11, he was conducting multivariate analysis to figure out if the size of a baseball stadium affects attendance (it doesn’t). By age 13, he was using statistics to manage a fantasy baseball team. When his parents refused to buy him computer games, he taught himself the Basic programming language and created his own.

We wouldn't have it any other way.

Now Kos, don't you think it's time Nate gets elevated to "Kos Alumni" in your blogroll?

And Nate, if you're reading this, about that e-mail I sent you a few months ago ... :)

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Our "Poblano" (aka Nate Silver) is a star

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