Nate Silver, best known as the founder of FiveThirtyEight, is recognized as a statistical mastermind and the leader in the field of data journalism. Silver originally used his statistical genius for baseball, but eventually thrust himself into the political realm. Now, Silver runs FiveThirtyEight, which has expanded into a major resource for sports analytics.
Initially, Silver worked with KPMG as an economic consultant. Discontent with his work, Silver pursued a side project that combined two of his interests––statistics and baseball. After continuous effort, this side project evolved into PECOTA (Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm), a system that applies sabermetrics to predict player performance.