Nate Silver, who has relaunched his FiveThirtyEight website under ESPN auspices, was making the media rounds last night, appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and ESPN2's "Olbermann." Silver told Jon Stewart the site relaunched with a "very young team." Silver: "It was a great moment to launch, but then we realized, 'Oh (EXPLETIVE), we have to publish this thing every day.' So it's a lot of work. We're getting better. ... Maybe due to programs like this there was a lot of hype about me and FiveThirtyEight." Stewart noted he referred to Silver as the "Lord of the Algorithm." Silver: "That was useful for book sales at the time, but right now it kind of sets a very high bar" ("The Daily Show," Comedy Central, 3/27).
ESPN's Keith Olbermann said the site "recently launched under the ESPN vast umbrella of everything." Silver: "It's fun to go back in and dive into sports. ... The idea is we have a set of tools and methods that maybe you don’t find as often in traditional newsrooms … We try to apply those tools to a broad array of fields. Not everything is like sports where it's easy to model" ("Olbermann," ESPN2, 3/27).
