Nate Silver, editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, will give a speech titled “The Signal and the Noise: An Evening with Nate Silver,” focusing on statistics and how they relate to the modern world.
Silver is also the main data scientist and founder of FiveThirtyEight, which is owned by ESPN. The site covers sports, politics, economics, science and popular culture. Silver is known for his work with statistics, which he uses to predict the outcome of various events. He was able to accurately predict the outcome of 49 of 50 states during the 2008 presidential election, and all 50 states in the 2012 election. The speech, sponsored by MSC Bethancourt, will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Rudder Auditorium.
Accounting junior and MSC Bethancourt executive Brett Lucy said Silver will talk about how to use statistics to analyze today’s society.
“Nate will be discussing how to combine different analytical tools and how to use them to properly sort through all the information and data that comes our way today,” Lucy said. “He will use relevant topics in the world today to relate how his methods can help one rise above all the nonsense and useless information that is often espoused by others.”
Although the speech will be centrally focused around statistics concepts, Lucy said the speech won’t be tailored to math-oriented people.
“Honestly, we have been targeting the whole campus,” Lucy said. “We want as diverse of an audience as possible, and we truly believe that everyone on this campus will benefit from this talk.”
Lucy said MSC Bethancourt chose Silver because  of his unique methodology and relevance to the world today.
“He is an outside-the-box thinker and someone who has — and continues to — break ground in a variety of subjects,” Lucy said. “On top of this, he is extremely relevant at this point in time.
 With the recent election and the continued chaos of the new administration, Nate has been an important voice and someone that has been looked to for clarification. This modern state of affairs and our mission as an organization made him a great person to come speak to our campus.”
Political science senior and MSC Bethancourt chair Alexa Etheredge said the group decided to bring Silver to campus because they thought his speech would offer a fresh perspective on current events.
“We really admired his work both with data and making predictions with that data,” Etheredge said. “We thought [bringing him to campus] would be a great way to talk about dealing with a world that is so saturated with data, and he is able to approach these topics from a different standpoint.”
Etheredge said she hopes the speech proves impactful to those who attend.
“He has a lot of knowledge that students could benefit from,” Etheredge said. “I think that he will give students a great perspective on making decisions and predictions about the world today. Hopefully they can take something away and back into their lives.”