And those stories, because of their scientific imprimatur, have audiences especially rapt. With the right humans pushing the right buttons, numbers tell stories no storyteller ever could. Encouraged by Silver and his analytical allies, many now want hard facts instead of anecdotes and intuitions. Today we’re offered more accessible information than ever before, and contemporary computing power renders the same data more easily harnessed, studied and presented. Silver’s worldview, in which empiricism trumps experts and numbers rout narratives, has spread far and wide in an age eager to learn what data has to say about modern life. Now ESPN is turning to Silver for a play bigger than sports. He accurately projected results in all 50 states, all the while merrily tweaking the traditional press for what he reckoned was a blinkered, overheated representation of how elections work. (FiveThirtyEight takes its name from the number of electoral votes up for grabs every four years.) In 2012, Silver’s cool reading of the presidential campaign helped Democrats through sleepless October nights. Silver’s facility with figures first brought him to everyone’s attention in 2008, when his online forecast correctly called 49 of 50 states in the U.S. That’s when the data-crunching digital publication of that name, run by 36-year-old statistician Nate Silver, makes its debut as an ESPN property. Later this month, ESPN will add a new number: FiveThirtyEight.
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