>And he upset them further by turning political prognostication into something understandable by common readers -- instead of something only pointy-hatted political wizards could divine with the right amount of eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients.

How did he do that?

If anything, I would argue the opposite, because his model is proprietary and his explanations (presumably deliberately) vague. 538 is awash with numbers but the algorithms used to generate them are the very definition of "eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients".

He effectively gave us the equation and kept secret most of the coefficients (though he explained how to choose many of those coefficients). That wouldn't be acceptable for academic purposes, but it seems quite reasonable for journalistic purposes (and is certainly more than any typical political "analyst" provides). He also couldn't give out all the raw data that went into the analyses, because much of it was stuff he had to pay for. Getting past those paywalls and assembling a comprehensive database of polling information is almost certainly the bulk of the work necessary for reproducing his results.

If only the FICO score algorithm was available somewhere...

I feel like we followed a different 538...

Silver basically said "here are the exact probabilities we have calculated for these races and here is the gist of our methodology [1]". If that doesn't cut through the rhetoric, opinion, and 'expert analysis' that plagues MSM political coverage, I don't know what else possibly could.

[1] - http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology/

> 538 is awash with numbers but the algorithms used to generate them are the very definition of "eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients".

I agree. I much prefer the (simpler) work of Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium (http://election.princeton.edu/) who did release MATLAB code of his work and his data sources so you could do it yourself. Somehow, Nate Silver got all the media attention though.

>Somehow, Nate Silver got all the media attention though.

Yes, somehow the young, geekily attractive popular sports author, whose blog on an extremely popular alternative news site grew a significant cult following, got all the mainstream media attention. It is extremely surprising that said media attention did not go to the duo of crusty, obscure, highfalutin Ivy-league academics instead.

Somehow, that happened. How, we'll never know.

I'm not sure if they could compete. Disney/ESPN is as deep pocketed, lets him get closer to sports (don't forget, he made his name originally as the guy who created PECOTA), and gives him as much or more freedom as the NYT. Also, I don't doubt he looked at what ESPN has allowed Grantland to become under Bill Simmons.

I think he took the easy path. Probably a lot more money, but also he gets to work on sports predictions instead of angering relatively powerful people.

It's up to him to take whichever path he chooses, and he's not morally better or worse for choosing any over another.

Now that MSM has seen what's possible when logic and statistical analysis is applied to journalism, I'd imagine they'll be able to find a team to reproduce or at least mimic what Silver did in 2012.

I really don't think he cares about angering powerful people. He cares about his freedom to work on what he wants, which ESPN has done an admirably good job of allowing Simmons to do with Grantland.

> And he upset them further by turning political prognostication into something understandable by common readers -- instead of something only pointy-hatted political wizards could divine with the right amount of eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients.

And get better results in the process.

I couldn't agree more. My respect for the NYT is shaky and them letting Nate Silver leave while keeping the vacuous talking heads you named is just shameful.

It sounds like they made Nate an incredible offer and were willing to meet any of his demands. It sounds like they would have done anything to keep him.

Their offer to him was already grating to many others at the Times, I imagine. They offered him quite the little staff, and expansion into any topic he wanted.

I don't think his decision to leave was about their offer, that, or ESPN/ABC just dreamed bigger and gave him a bigger offer.

Either way, I'm psyched to see that he's getting brand separation and returning to his website along with a staff and the ability to write about whatever he wants.

I'm glad Nate walked. He was always a poor fit at the New York Times.

Actually Krugman is also a poor fit. I wish he'd walk away and just keep doing what he does independently. At least then I wouldn't have to go into privacy mode to read his articles.

Absolutely agree! Kurgman is a poor fit for any media outlet that tries to appeal to a mainstream audience. It is just saddening that such a brilliant academic mind now dedicates his life to partisan punditry.

Well, I love the concept of proto-Krugman as much as you, but nothing really keeps Krugman at NYT. He obviously enjoys the influence that punditry brings him over flexing his academic mind.

I am not sure if this is real influence or perceived influence. But it would be extremely interesting to get his personal take on his very own path towards punditry. In my opinion becoming just another shouting voice in the wind weakened his expert opinion that he previously had through his academic credentials. Previously quoting Krugman had at least some a general appeal, but today it is making a political statement.

Krugman has said himself that having a regular column in the most widely-read newspaper in the US is a huge source of influence.

No, Nate left.

Read this NiemanLab article from 2010. It was always clear (to me at least and a few others) that the NYT thing was just a step along the way (partnership vs acquisition - 3 yr contract, etc):

http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/articles-of-incorporation-n...

The reality is that the NY Times was going to have him focus on politics, with the odd foray onto TV to promote his own brand.

Or, he could sign up with ESPN/Disney, and do sports on ESPN, politics on ABC, and so on.

He'll have a much broader level of impact at ESPN/ABC. I suspect NY Times just couldn't match that.

I don't think Friedman and Dowd should be mutually exclusive with him. It's multiple avenues towards the truth - see who gets their first. When he's correct, it's good for science and math.