Nate Silver's failure as celebrated as Brazil's collapse
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 9:15 am
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... lapse.html
The world may still be reeling from last night’s World Cup semi-Final between Germany and Brazil, but none more so than Nate Silver the celebrated statistician behind the fivethiryeight blog. Silver had pegged Brazil as the favourites to win the cup and stated their chances of success against Germany last night at 65%.
Silver shot to prominence during the 2008 presidential elections when writing, initially under the pseudonym Poblano on the blog Daily Kos, before transferring to his own site in partnership with the New York Times in 2008. Since then he has gained public recognition for his PECOTA system which forecasted the performances and career developments for major league baseball players.
Throughout the game the 538 Twitter account, now aligned with sports broadcaster ESPN, was tweeting facts, figures and other statistics defending its position.
At 9.52pm, with two of Brazil’s top players out, Silver reassured the world that ‘the players replacing Neymar are going to be well above average.
'Following the 10.26 tweet of ‘OMG’ Silver came back with ‘According to @espn's SPI, which our model uses, odds of #GER scoring 5+ goals was 0.7%. A 5-0 final score? 1-in-1250. (via @ESPNStatsInfo)’
The world may still be reeling from last night’s World Cup semi-Final between Germany and Brazil, but none more so than Nate Silver the celebrated statistician behind the fivethiryeight blog. Silver had pegged Brazil as the favourites to win the cup and stated their chances of success against Germany last night at 65%.
Silver shot to prominence during the 2008 presidential elections when writing, initially under the pseudonym Poblano on the blog Daily Kos, before transferring to his own site in partnership with the New York Times in 2008. Since then he has gained public recognition for his PECOTA system which forecasted the performances and career developments for major league baseball players.
Throughout the game the 538 Twitter account, now aligned with sports broadcaster ESPN, was tweeting facts, figures and other statistics defending its position.
At 9.52pm, with two of Brazil’s top players out, Silver reassured the world that ‘the players replacing Neymar are going to be well above average.
'Following the 10.26 tweet of ‘OMG’ Silver came back with ‘According to @espn's SPI, which our model uses, odds of #GER scoring 5+ goals was 0.7%. A 5-0 final score? 1-in-1250. (via @ESPNStatsInfo)’