• by Diane Mermigas , December 2, 2008

Nate Silver has made a name for himself playing the percentages

Nate Silver, self-described data-miner and numbers geek, has beat the odds by leveraging his upstart election-year hit FiveThirtyEight.com (which correctly and precisely predicted primary results and the outcome of the presidential election) into a new congressional policy voting tracker, a book deal and the right to remain fiercely independent of investors clamoring to back his entrepreneurial approach to crystal ball gazing.

The instant, viral success of FiveThirtyEight (named for the number of electoral votes) has given Silver the prominence and resources to develop branded sites that mine data and render it into intriguing, understandable predictions. FiveThirtyEight will be the broader moniker for politics-related products that will continue to track polls and votes in even-numbered election years. Beginning Inauguration Day, it will track Congressional legislators' voting records, ties to lobbyists and other related idiosyncrasies along with grass roots policy news. "We're going to write about the politics to achieve a universal health care bill or block it; not the merits of policy per say. At first it will be more descriptive than predictive," he said. "We'll match our good model for covering campaigns and election outcomes with a good model for covering how the sausage is being made."

His life-long passion for numbers is the basis for a book deal he just signed with Penguin exploring the science of predictions in politics, sports, weather forecasts, national security, fashion trends, finance and economics, disease progression and online dating. He will be free to develop new technology and science-driven prediction Web sites in special interest areas such as entertainment and pop culture, identifying such things as the next successful movie and recorded music.

Silver makes it all look much easier than it is: the intuitive use of Web information for sophisticated, simple content that has universal appeal and purpose. The world generally is comprised of souls more comfortable with words than with numbers. "People see numbers and generally freeze up and don't know what to do. We want to try and overcome that barrier," he says. The secret is eliminating the mystery by concentrating on the applications.

While he concedes that there was some fortuitous timing involved with his site launch, "I also worked my butt off. I did a lot of media. I focused more of my time on getting the exposure as broad as possible than maximizing CPMS or the site's interface. We decided to just get the start up and develop a brand name and do it the best we could."

Silver's first effort to turn his hobby into gold was inventing PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), a system to forecast the performance and career development of Major League baseball players, which was bought by Baseball Prospectus. People began to take notice when his system predicted the worst-to-first ascension of the Tampa Bay Rays. His love of Mexican food resulted in an earlier venture - the site Burrito Bracket, a competitive ranking of Mexican food in his Chicago Wicker Park neighborhood under his call sign, Poblano.

Data and metrics are a problem for a lot of industries including advertising and media, which he may become involved with at some point. Wall Street is duly intrigued and in need of the simple elegance of his forecasting vision. "I've already been approached by and been asked to speak to a number of hedge funds."

"If I wanted to make a great living for myself, I probably could work for a hedge fund or something like that. Frankly, I would rather make a good living and do things that are more enjoyable and for the longer term. For the moment, I am resisting venture capital and investor backing to remain independent," Silver says. "This is not a big operation. There are just a couple of us. We're more concerned about how to efficiently monetize the traffic we have and to provide the kind of content that makes people want to be there in the first place. That takes more ingenuity than it does capital."