My guest today, Nate Silver, is the founder of the Data Driven Website 538.

He's also the author of the best-selling book, The Signal and the Noise.

Silver's best-known for his shockingly accurate election predictions, but that's just

the tip of the iceberg.

I think I have strength in dealing with imperfect information and dealing with uncertainty

and kind of refining best guesses.

Welcome to People I Am Mostly Admire, with Steve Levin.

What I love most about Nate Silver is that he has such amazing instincts both for analyzing

and writing about data.

Almost every time I read something he's written, I have the same reaction.

Damn, I wish I had written that.

So, let's start with the topic you're most famous for, and that's predicting election

outcomes.

In 2008, your first foray into political prediction, you correctly predicted 49 out

of 50 states in the electoral college, and then you against all odds, did even better

in 2012, getting every single state right.

Those two election cycles led people to believe you were some kind of a messiah or an

oracle, and I have to imagine that's both the blessing and the curse, right?

Very much so.

I remember telling my little agent that I am being set up to fail here, inevitably there

will be a time when the low probability outcome comes up, although in 2016, it wasn't

that low actually.

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