Posts Tagged ‘Nate Silver’

Following his chronicling of 2012 film awards season via The Frontrunners, Fandango chief correspondent Dave Karger is down in Austin with the site’s senior director of PR Harry Medved and editor-in-chief Chuck Walton to officially launch his new Web series, Weekend Ticket. The program will debut on the site March 14 and feature SXSW interviews with Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, Olivia Wilde, Paul Walker, Josh Duhamel and Paul Rudd (or, as Andy Samberg so hilariously referred to Rudd during the Spirit Awards, Paul “Reeud”).

Karger hinted when we spoke with him not long ago that he would be making use of the formidable Nate Silver-like predictive data gathered from the site’s ticket buyers. Sure enough, Weekend Ticket will be sourcing a new weekly indicator also unveiled at SXSW:

“Fanticipation” ranks fan excitement around upcoming and current movies based on Fandango’s proprietary data collected from its online and mobile traffic, the social media engagement of its fans and its advance ticket sales…

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FishbowlLA braved the harsh L.A. drizzle on Thursday night to hit Skybar, where BuzzFeed staffers and friends were celebrating the launch of the website’s new Los Angeles bureau. Top BuzzFeed brass was in attendance: CEO and founder Jonah Peretti, president Jon Steinberg, editor-in-chief Ben Smith, executive VP of video Ze Frank, and probably more we didn’t recognize.

We spotted Nate Silver in the crowd, as well as Julia Boorstin of CNBC, comedian Chelsea Peretti, LA Times VP of Communications Nancy Sullivan and former Good magazine editor Ann Friedman, who tolerated some gushing on our behalf over her delightful Tumblr and column, #Real Talk.

But we don’t have pictures of any of these lovely people, because we forgot our camera. We only managed this one grainy cell phone picture before giving up and hitting the open bar:

That’s Ann-Marie Thomson of SYCO television, Grantland editor Emily Yoshida and BuzzFeed’s Los Angeles bureau chief Richard Rushfield being blinded by my cell phone camera.

• Of course anyone who writes about the virtues of writing for free for the old Huffpo gets sent to our inbox. Author Michael Gross says that writing for free, for him was actually getting free publicity…for him.

• Nate Silver writes about the economics of blogging at Huffpo. Or at least what they were before the merger with a billion dollar corporation.

• Tommy Christopher at Mediate reports on the uncertain future the Huffpo merger makes for Politics Daily. There have been rumors AOL writers and bloggers are getting pay cuts in the wake of the merger. These rumors have been vehemently denied by our multiple sources. Maybe Christopher knows something our handful of not-named AOL bloggers don’t.

• CJR reminds us that AOL settled with unpaid volunteers a few years ago.

• A decent overview from PaidContent…which is a funny name to talk about Huffpo. Just funny.

• NYTimes David Carr writes, “For those of us who make a living typing, it’s all very scary, of course. It’s less about the diminution of authority and expertise, although there is that, and more about the growing perception that content is a commodity, and one that can be had for the price of zero.”

Okay, folks, here’s the secret to success in this new media world: be brilliant. It really gives you an edge these days.

Brian Stelter at the NYT writes:

The New York Times said Thursday that it would begin hosting the popular blog FiveThirtyEight and make its founder, Nate Silver, a regular contributor to the newspaper and the Sunday magazine.

Mr. Silver, a statistical wizard, became a bonafide media star during the last presidential election season for his political projections based on dissections of polling data. He retains all rights to FiveThirtyEight and will continue to run it himself, but “under the banner and auspices of NYTimes.com,” The Times said in a news release. The arrangement is similar to one The Times struck with the authors of the blog Freakonomics in 2007.

The Freakonomics blog appears in the Opinion section of NYTimes.com. FiveThirtyEight content will be incorporated in the politics section of NYTimes.com.

Previously on FBLA:

Geez, Norm Coleman, it’s nearly July. How much foot-dragging were you planning on doing?

AP reports:

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Democrat Al Franken be certified as the winner of the state’s long-running Senate race.

The high court rejected a legal challenge from Republican Norm Coleman, whose options for regaining the Senate seat are dwindling.

Justices said Franken is entitled to the election certificate he needs to assume office. With Franken and the usual backing of two independents, Democrats will have a big enough majority to overcome Republican filibusters.

Anyway, the important thing about this – besides a comedian being in the senate instead of the other way around, is election oracle, blogger, Nate Silver was also right about this one.

Previously on FBLA:

Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti was one of the recipients of New Leaders Council 2009 “40 Under 40″ Award.

About the “40 Under 40″ Awards

The 40 Under 40 Awards was created by New Leaders Council (www.newleaderscouncil.org) to help recognize the hard work of a diverse group of young leaders including elected officials, inspiring community organizers, as well as non-profit and policy leaders who exemplify the spirit of progressive political entrepreneurship.

Garcetti is still under 40 years old? Really? We’ve never seen a birth certificate. Isn’t that curious? All this time and Garcetti has never produced a real birth certificate proving his age? We’re just saying. We’ve never seen it. Not an authentic one anyway. Ahem.

Also winning this year was blogger Nate Silver. Swoon.

Previously on FBLA: Number 285, Why We Love Nate Silver, FBLA Meets Nate Silver!!!

Nate Silver used his big brain to predict the Oscars and got a couple wrong, namely Best Actor and Supporting Actress.

Uhm, if it starts raining frogs or something – we are so out of here.

Anyway, he explains on his blog:

Instead, whenever we make an incorrect prediction, we are probably better off asking questions along these lines:

What, if anything, did the incorrect prediction reveal to us about the model’s flaws?
Was the model wrong for the wrong reasons? Or was it wrong for the right reasons?
What, if any, improvements should we make to the model given these results?

Don’t worry Nate – it’s the Academy – it’s so not you!

The Oracle of the 2008 Election, math genius, object of the Facebook group “There’s a 97.3 Percent Chance That Nate Silver Is Totally My Boyfriend”, FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver (seen to the left after we tracked him down at the HuffPo pre-inauguration party in DC) has turned his talents to the monumentally important role of Oscar forecasting.

NY Mag interviews him. He gives Best Supporting Actor to
Heath Ledger, Supporting Actress to Taraji P. Henson, Lead Actor
to Mickey Rourke, Lead Actress Kate Winslet, Best Director Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire and Best Picture to Slumdog Millionaire.

Oh yeah? We aren’t math geniuses. We have to show our work doing long division and we KNOW Slumdog and Taraji P. Hensen will mostly likely win. Heath Ledger? Lock.

Now predict the technical awards and we’ll be impressed…even more so.

After the jump is the video of Silver on Countdown.

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Al Franken looks to the winner of the in Minnesota senate race with Norm Coleman.

And yes, Nate Silver predicted as much.

Well, it’s about time a comedian could parlay those skills to gainful employment – or at least a decent health care plan. Yay dental!

Anyway, incumbents need to watch their backs – this starts a scary precedent – they could get usurped by Fran Drescher or Carrot Top. But more likely Carrot Top.

Nate Silver, the guy that predicted the election better than anyone else, now says that it’s likely that Al Franken will win the recount of the Senate race in Minnesota.

He even shows his work here:

In addition, the regression analysis contains interaction terms between each combination of two variables, as well as an interaction term for all three variables, all of which are statistically significant. The regression is weighted by the square root of the number of ballots cast in that precinct.

Snort.

We’re not celebrating just yet. But we think it’s about time there was a stand up comic in the senate and not just a bunch of clowns.