Nate Silver seems like a pretty smart guy, wouldn't it be better if he spent his time doing something more productive? Predicting the outcome of an election may have practical applications in gambling or for a hedge fund, and yes he gets mad publicity and attention from women sure, but aren't there more useful ways to apply statistics?
EDIT: Haldean, your point is excellent and cancels out mine absolutely. Good thinking, you are entirely right. I would add that his attention and publicity itself should increase the credibility of rational analysis in the news, and that alone would be a great accomplishment.
He has utterly discredited the horse race scam of big media political coverage. That is a significant contribution, because such coverage has been so influential in managing public opinion and how people think about politics.
He did it first and more dramatically in the 2008 primaries, but this time feels more like the watershed.
It's not all Nate's doing, of course; this is a long term trend and many people are working on it.
Imagine, too, a scenario where the results deviated significantly from his predictions. In the past, the public, guided by the media, might have been satisfied shrugging it off as "god's will" or "people are just unpredictable" or even "pshaw, more conspiracy theories!" Now I like to believe there will be more pressure to investigate and rationally explain the source of that deviation. Are dead people really voting in Chicago? Were voting machines hacked in Cuyahoga County? I feel like Silver's counter-narrative -- and more critically, his methods -- have been an important contribution to a fair and open democratic process.
The idea that this was "a close race", "too close to call", was a narrative pushed by the media to make it more artificially exciting to drive viewers.
Pundits hate him for it because it shows how content-free, and ideological/ opinion-driven their arguments are rather than sound judgement based on available data.
The horse race coverage of the next political race will be just as strong as it was this time. This isn't the triumph of data over narrative, it's just data showing it can be more predictive.
Narrative still has more mass popularity, and it always will.
Hmm, I'm not sure how my point got turned into a claim that narrative will henceforth have less mass popularity than data. I'm talking about a shift among elites. Political media are going to be forced to adapt, in a direction I think most people here would consider a good one. If they don't, they will look ridiculous, which will weaken them even faster; appearing serious and important is their trump card, after all.
But tell me how you propose to measure "just as strong" and I might take your bet :)
I looked for and read what I think are the comments you mean. He got the 2008 British election wrong, yes? I'm inclined to cut him some slack about that. The two systems are so different that domain expertise in one might not translate well to the other, and it would be a classic geek mistake to underestimate the differences at first.
Instead of thinking of him as a statistician who works for a newspaper, think of him as a statistically-minded journalist. I wish _more_ people did what he did: apply scientific reasoning to national and global issues.
To his credit, he was wise enough to publish a book at just the time when people want to hear from him most. The downside of being the king of political prediction is that you're only popular once every four years. But you're really really popular, and he seems to be aware of and capitalizing on that.
There is room in this world for every corner of productivity. He's doing some very good work; other people are doing very good work in exactly the other fields you're talking about. One is not inherently better than the other, since it takes many different outcomes and works to create this thing we call society.
In fact, you could say that the maximal way to be productive might be to be diversely productive, since it produces the widest array of new ideas and conclusions, and tests every nook and cranny of possibility. Surely we have enough people in the world and in the country to provide for that diversity.
EDIT: Haldean, your point is excellent and cancels out mine absolutely. Good thinking, you are entirely right. I would add that his attention and publicity itself should increase the credibility of rational analysis in the news, and that alone would be a great accomplishment.