Nate Silver

Nate Silver is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections. He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023.

Silver was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time in 2009 after an election forecasting system he developed successfully predicted the outcomes in forty-nine of the fifty states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. His subsequent election forecasting systems predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections with a high degree of accuracy. His polls-only model gave Donald Trump only a 28.6% chance of victory in the 2016 presidential election, but this was higher than many other forecasting competitors.

Much of Silver's approach can be characterized by using probabilistic and statistical modeling to try and understand complex social systems, such as professional sports, the popularity of political platforms, and elections.

Silver was born in East Lansing, Michigan, the son of Sally (née Thrun), a community activist, and Brian David Silver, a former chair of the political science department at Michigan State University. Silver's mother's family was of English and German descent. Through his mother, he is a great-grandson of Harmon Lewis, the President of Alcoa Steamship Company, as well as a great-great-nephew of the embryologist Warren Harmon Lewis and his wife, biologist Margaret Reed Lewis. Through his father, he is a great-nephew of geologists Caswell Silver and Leon Silver. He has described himself as "half-Jewish".

Silver plays poker semi-professionally, including an 87th place finish in the 2023 World Series of Poker Main Event. (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

• Wikipedia: Nate Silver