Nate Silver is a statistician, a political forecaster, and the founder of FiveThirtyEight.com, which has since 2010 been a blog of The New York Times. He’s known for his incredible accuracy, correctly predicting the presidential winner in 49 states in 2008, and in all 50 states in 2012. On 2012’s election night, FiveThirtyEight accounted for 20% of NYTimes.com traffic.

He’s been honored with numerous accolades, including Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2009, Rolling Stone’s 100 Agents of Change, the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Political Coverage, and the 2012 Webby Award for Best Political Blog.

He’s a prolific author, with titles that include “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t” (2012), “Baseball Prospectus” (an annual publication since 2003), and “Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning” (2005). He’s notable in the world of baseball for creating the famous PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm) system. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago.