How is Silver so bad at this that his contract doesn’t let him keep the website he started while simultaneously letting Disney fire him? Oy. I feel kind of bad for the guy.
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Didn’t he already sell the website to them awhile back? Would think probably got a good bit for it? 
LOL
Sold it to ESPN like 10 years ago, it’s almost certainly worth more now, but it’s crazy that he didn’ thave some kind of deal in there that prevented them from firing him.
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I read that their license to his models expires when his original contract was supposed to end, which isn’t far from now. Not sure if that is true, but if so, it will be at least somewhat interesting to me if ABC can develop something to fill the void and how then it and the 538 brand fare against whatever Nate does with his stuff next.
He’s an idiot if he thinks that his models are worth more than his brand. His model is a fancy fucking poll aggregator.
Yeah there’s nothing particularly good or novel about any of his models.
I mean five thirty eight.com was a really good website/brand. It was easy to remember. It made sense. He developed a huge following. He’s going to have a tough time replicating that again in a much more crowded field (and competing against his old site).
I certainly agree that 538 is a good brand name and that the brand has strength. I think you underestimate the brand of “Nate Silver.” He’s certainly fallen off some, perhaps more in the eyes of his closest followers and critics that the general public, but he became a household name in 2008. That isn’t all gone I don’t think, and I think even his detractors will want to know what he does next.
I don’t claim any certainty or prophecy on the subject, but I think it’s more likely that Nate starts a new website with a new brand that has some success than it is that he fades into obscurity.
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lol nate’s a fraud. I’ve read the mathematical explanations of his work and a lot of it was based on arbitrary weights that seemed like pure voodoo.
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I mean, so have I but that definitely doesn’t mean the American public did.
yea I’m not sure the average american really gives a flying fuck about polling meta analysis or scorching hot takes at least 15 years outdated that he somehow bakes into his predictions. He’ll be quickly forgotten. The only use I ever found for him was in predicting which way the fish would go on predictit, while that was still a thing - a political Jim Cramer.
MrsWookie, moments ago: “Nate Silver fired? Isn’t he that stats guy that did the stats stuff on, what was it, 538? How can they fire him? He was the stats guy.”
QED.
“political Jim Cramer” is a perfect epitaph for this dude’s career. He got 2 things right in 2008/12. And rode that to… today, apparently.
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His 2016 result was the least bad of anyone.
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I once won a March Madness pool by copying his brackets. I know absolutely nothing about basketball (couldn’t even tell you the team names).
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And they updated based on the most recent performance. Basically a bit of a “learning” algorithm but not particularly sophisticated and me thinks someone just tweaking the weighting until it looks right for the past and then trying to apply that forward.
It’s better than a simple average certainly. But I’d expect most of us here could do similar.
That’s pretty bold, because that’s been some of his worst material (the World Cup in Brazil being the worst and most obviously laughable).
Maybe I was jsut in a really soft pool of players lol.