He will tell you why Beto O'Rourke you may be a dark horse candidate in the Democratic presidential field, but also why you shouldn't count out President Trump's re-election chances. It can also tell you who will emerge as the winner of March Madness and how Major League Baseball could cut down on strikeouts and improve the pace of the game.
Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of the analytics news site FiveThirtyEight, will appear on Northeastern's campus in Boston on Wednesday to discuss the role of data in predicting and understanding the new landscape of American politics. He can also make some sports predictions.
A trained statistician, Silver channeled his passion for baseball and poker analysis into the political arena in 2008 through his FiveThirtyEight blog, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States' electoral college. Today, owned by ESPN, Silver's popular data-focused blog not only covers politics and sports, but also analyzes health and science data, the economy and where to find the best burrito in the country.
FiveThirtyEight gained notoriety in 2008 for its accurate forecasting Results of that year's elections. In 2009, Silver was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine after he successfully carried the results in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election.
Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the 2012 United States presidential election. His site gave Donald Trump the highest percentage chance of winning the presidency of any polling model tracked by The New York Times, even as news outlets attacked Silver for overstating Trump's chances .
Silver generates forecasts using a clever polling technique that accounts for biases, such as pollsters only calling people with landlines.
He will chat with Northeastern's political science professor Kostas Panagopoulos on March 27th at 4pm in the East Village.
The event marks the second installment of the new Northeastern series, “The urban experience,” profiling the generation of cutting-edge leaders shaping media, policy and politics. The program kicked off on March 18 with a panel discussion by four leading political correspondents on what it's like to be a journalist or political leader in an increasingly polarized and digitally driven world.
Future events will include South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigiegformer Navy intelligence officer who was elected at age 29 in 2011 and reelected in 2015. He will discuss the influence of millennials on American politics on April 3 at Interdisciplinary Complex of Science and Engineering.
For media inquiriesPlease get in touch media@northeastern.edu.
