Nate Silver, a superstar in the statistics and analytics world (if there ever was one), recently made the industry-shattering decision to take his vaunted FiveThirtyEight blog from The New York Times to The Worldwide Leader in Sports Entertainment, cable television giant ESPN. Despite his strong background in sports – Silver was famed for developing the PECOTA system to accurately forecast the career development of Major League Baseball players – he made his name in predictive analytics, particularly in politics. Silver correctly projected 49 out of 50 and 50 out of 50 states in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, respectively, flouting many of the traditional pundits who had dismissed his analytical model and system as hogwash.
Imagine that: a data-driven approach to forecasting being initially dismissed, yet ultimately proving to be the most accurate.
And therein lies the truly interesting aspect of Silver’s jump from strictly political reporting and analysis in the old-school field of newspaper journalism to covering a wide breadth of topics, including sports and politics, at one of the hottest new media companies in the world. A seismic, paradigm shift is underway.
ESPN had built its reputation on blustery talking heads, making household names out of “analysts” like Chris Berman, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless. Instead of tackling sports analysis and reporting with a thoughtful, data-driven and statistically supported approach, these analysts were presenting forced, tired narratives, making outrageous contrarian points and simply shouting louder and louder.
Similarly, Nate allegedly ran into many data-opposed obstacles at The New York Times, particularly in the form of veteran reporters who balked at his aggressive new data-driven methods. Consider this damning indictment from the opinion pages of Margaret Sullivan at The Times, just a few days after Silver’s announcement to leave:
“[Nate] was, in a word, disruptive. Much like the Brad Pitt character in the movie “Moneyball” disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball players, Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics. His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, and…opinion writing or “punditry”, as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.”
Just as the data-driven sales manager would balk at having to use sales forecasting methods that rely on a finger-in-the-wind approach, so did Silver struggle with the old-school mentality of “punditry” at The New York Times. Silver wasn’t interested in pre-designed narratives – he wanted to let the numbers, his data and research do the talking.
While ESPN has made attempts in recent years to fold more data-driven analysis into its sports presentations – the launching of Grantland, a well-rounded and analytical sister site, by famed columnist Bill Simmons represents a key turning point – none are more statistically significant than bringing on Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight brand. With this move, ESPN signalled that it is no longer satisfied with merely being the loudest person in the room; it wanted to be the smartest, the most statistically supported, and the most data-driven. Just as the title of Silver’s book suggests, the increasingly data-driven world we live in today is ready to separate the signal from the noise.
