Culture

Nate Silver Can Accurately Predict an Election, but Not a Super Bowl

Nate Silver has made a life for himself by predicting things. He is not bad at it, either. He is right more often than he is wrong, except when it comes to football. 

By Connor Simpson
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Nate Silver has made a life for himself by predicting things. He is not bad at it, either. He is right more often than he is wrong, except when it comes to football.

Silver appeared on ESPN's First Take a few days ago and predicted a Super Bowl match between the upstart Seattle Seahawks vs. the evil empire of the New England Patriots. Silver explained that he used advanced metrics from Football Outsiders -- not unlike the advanced metrics Silver helped create for Baseball Prospectus -- to come to his conclusion. Seattle was the more balanced team, and they seemed to be peaking late in the season.

Hate to break it to ya, pal, but Seattle just lost to Atlanta in a nail-biter. Oh, and Silver also predicted Denver would play the Patriots in the AFC championship game. Denver lost on Saturday, too.

This is the same Nate Silver that correctly predicted 49 out of 50 possible states in the 2008 election, and then went 50 for 50 in 2012. The kid can correctly guess 99 percent of two consecutive elections, but is already eliminated from his playoff pool. (Pat yourself on the back if you're still contending in your pool... now.) Silver's poor playoff performance shouldn't came as too big of a surprise to anyone who follows him on Twitter, though:

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.