Nate Silver is a (the?) leading statistician in the U.S. and author of a book on making predictions called The Signal and the Noise (#2 right now on Amazon) – and, in case you didn’t know, the person who flew in the face of pundits to stand by his prediction that Obama would be reelected.

And Twitter loves this seemingly socially awkward dude.

Nate Silver’s real Twitter account is very factual – much like what you’d expect from someone data-driven:

But there’s a pretty hilarious Twitter account parodying his seemingly superhuman ability to predict elections:

Why all the buzz about this guy? PR Newser says it best: “For the past three weeks, Silver predicted a small but decisive Obama win despite the pundit class’s insistence that the race was “a toss-up”. Quite a few media folk lashed out, calling him partisan and insisting that his numbers were meaningless–but he never wavered.”

He made a large portion of the  media’s pundit/PR class look ridiculous, and he did it using the most basic public relations strategy: honesty, consistent messaging and confidence in his clearly defined brand.

And if you didn’t get to hear him talking about it yet, here he is sharing how simple this election math really is – and it’s a good excuse to watch a Colbert Report clip:

(Nate Silver image from Wikipedia)