Nate Silver's book sales skyrocket

[highplainsdem]

Source: Politico

Nate Silver nailed it last night, and it's paying off.

The New York Times' political statistician recently released a book, and in the last 24 hours sales have skyrocketed by 850% on Amazon.com, CNNMoney reports. "It is now the second best selling book on the site, behind only popular children's book, 'The Third Wheel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 7.'"

Prior to the election, Silver's methodology was called into question by pundits skeptical of his reliance on polling data, including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and David Brooks of the New York Times. (Silver's model is based on what Ezra Klein described as "little more than a sophisticated form of poll aggregation." If Silver had been wrong, the polling would have been wrong.) Yet Silver's model correctly forecast the winner in all 50 states. Florida, which he gave Obama a 50.3% chance of winning, is still up in the air -- but the 50.3% forecast more or less accounts for that.

Silver has been a huge asset to the Times since his model correctly forecast the outcome in 49 of 50 states during the 2008 election. In the days and hours prior to the election, roughly one out of every five visitors to NYTimes.com visited his blog, FiveThirtyEight.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/nate-silvers-book-sales-skyrocket-148893.html

[elleng]

1. GOOD!

He deserves it!

[FailureToCommunicate]

2. Couldn't happen to a nicer geek

Congrats Nate!

[GETTINGTIRED]

3. Well deserved....

[global1]

4. The Dems Need To Hire Him Before The Repugs Do....nt

[harmonicon]

5. To do what? (nt)

[elleng]

6. Don't know for what, and don't think he'd take the job.

FIrst, he may be tired of this gig, and
Second, he recognizes he must be and appear to be neutral, and he's taken that so far that he doesn't vote, not since he's been with NYT anyway. I'm sure he wouldn't accept a position with any partisan entity.

[Maven]

12. Nate is a gay 34 y/o man who lives in Brooklyn

I doubt he'll be going to work for the GOP anytime soon.

That said, I'm sure he would see no point in working for partisan ends. It's not his business. His business is crunching the numbers.

[Bigredhunk]

7. I Waited & Waited

Finally downloaded it on Amazon in the middle of the night last night/this morning. I was hoping it might drop to $9.99 from $12.99, but no biggie. It has been higher than that. Pretty sure it was $14.99 at some point(s).

Can't wait to read it!

[tufnel]

8. Palin bought it and will be a force next election

Something like 1 ice cube plus 2 ice cubes, factoring in the global ice melt ratio to ice and heat on the planet to the size of her ice cube trays and the distance to Russia, compared to total ice on Earth versus average global temp, multiplied by how many miles Russia is from Africa and how many Elks you can kill in a year, times how many babies Levi produces in a year, minus pills McCain takes in a day.....


And Palin wins the straw polls!

[clydefrand]

9. WELL, I'll bet Repubs are buying all of them

so they can learn how to do what Nate knows so they can win the next time.

Or maybe they don't want anyone else see how he does it.

I'm so thankful for Nate. Way to go, young man.

[Blasphemer]

10. Good for him

Others got it right also but he's the one that had to publicly defend his methodology time and time again in the face of right wing cynicism/denial.

[Kolesar]

11. I need help with uncertainty calculations for an impedance stabilization network

Probability is not fun.