Nate Silver

“People gravitate toward information that implies a happier outlook for them.”

“We're living in a world where Google beats Gallup.”

“I was looking for something like baseball, where there's a lot of data and the competition was pretty low. That's when I discovered politics.”

“Every four years in the presidential election, some new precedent is broken.”

“To the extent that you can find ways where you're making predictions, there's no substitute for testing yourself on real-world situations that you don't know the answer to in advance.”

“First of all, I think it's odd that people who cover politics wouldn't have any political views.”

“I love South American food, and I haven't really been down there. I really need a vacation.”

“People don't have a good intuitive sense of how to weigh new information in light of what they already know. They tend to overrate it.”

“People attach too much importance to intangibles like heart, desire and clutch hitting.”

“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.”

“I have the same friends and the same bad habits.”

“I don't play fantasy baseball anymore now because it's too much work, and I feel like I have to hold myself up to such a high standard. I'm pretty serious about my fantasy football, though.”

“If I had a spreadsheet on my computer, it looked like I was busy.”

“I don't think you should limit what you read.”

“We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.”

“On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.”

“I think there's space in the market for a half-dozen kind of polling analysts.”

“I actually buy the paper version of The New York Times maybe once or twice a week.”

“A lot of the time nothing happens in a day.”

“You get steely nerves playing poker.”