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Nate Silver, the numbers whiz whose statistical model allowed him to call the presidential primaries and the general election, explains the implications for business intelligence and IT management.

CIOinsight, By Edward Cone, 2009-01-06

Few people had a better 2008 than Nate Silver. The 30-year-old numbers whiz fed polling data and election returns into a statistical model he designed, allowing him to call the presidential primaries and the general election with uncanny accuracy and turning his Web site, FiveThirtyEight.com (named for the total number of Electoral College votes) into a must-read for political junkies.

Meanwhile, the system he developed for crunching baseball stats, known as PECOTA, predicted a successful season for the previously horrible Tampa Bay Rays, who went on to make it to the World Series. Silver spoke with Senior Writer Edward Cone about increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in political polling, and the implications of his work for business intelligence.

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