Was / is 538 blogger Nate Silver a member?

http://chicago.grubstreet.com/2012/11/nate-silver-burrito-blog.html

With a burrito blog I would not be surprised...

I do not want PMs about this: Nate is aware of LTH but not a member (as far as I know). We graduated the same year and were in the same dorm, which has its own interesting Chicago history.* Very quiet, polite guy who absolutely loves baseball and late-night Mexican food.

*if I haven't mentioned this story here before: when I told my grandparents where I'd be living as an undergrad, their jaws dropped, they looked at each other, and smiled. "That was the location for our senior prom in 1938. We were never apart after that except for the war."

I have to say the burrito blog is a thing of beauty
http://burritobracket.blogspot.com/

Before Nate Silver was Mr. 538, the burrito blog (and Silver's role in it) was actually briefly discussed here on LTH.

Santander wrote:I do not want PMs about this: Nate is aware of LTH but not a member (as far as I know). We graduated the same year and were in the same dorm, which has its own interesting Chicago history.* Very quiet, polite guy who absolutely loves baseball and late-night Mexican food.

I've been following his posts and predictions since 2007. He's a genius when it comes to numbers. Burritos? Not so sure

I met him in 2002/03 at a Giordanos in the city. It was a Baseball Prospectus (sabermetrics/statistics) get together and he was introducing his PECOTA projection system. Super smart dude.

People like him fascinate me...he has been a pioneer in baseball stats as well as political forecasting (probably other things too) and he's not even 35.

I missed the burrito thing, but in 2008 I found 538 early on and used it to win a dinner at Schwa in a contest for guessing the results that year.

50% of Nate's top six reasons Chicago is quantifiably superior to New York are Mexican-food-based:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/1 ... de=1762839

Can't argue with the criteria or the conclusions.

From Nate's AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit yesterday:

Q.
Are you ever going to finish your Burrito Bracket Project?
— CaptainSasquatch

A.
Perhaps I can convince Penguin that my next book should be a 256-taqueria burrito bracket with entries from all across the country.

One of the new features of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com at ESPN is a national burrito bracket.

https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/443783392186757120

538 announces "The Search for America's Best Burrito"
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/in- ... t-burrito/

Don't expect much local insight-- we are lumped in with the "Burrito-poor Northeast" and our regional representative is David Chang from New York.

I never understand why the "best burrito" would be in the USA? Thats like finding the best national food in the country next to where it was invented.

Tyrgyzistan wrote:I never understand why the "best burrito" would be in the USA? Thats like finding the best national food in the country next to where it was invented.

It's always been my understanding that the burrito (as we know it today) was invented in the USA. You can find them in Mexico as well, but I think the migration was decidedly to the south, rather than north.

stevez wrote:

Tyrgyzistan wrote:I never understand why the "best burrito" would be in the USA? Thats like finding the best national food in the country next to where it was invented.

It's always been my understanding that the burrito (as we know it today) was invented in the USA. You can find them in Mexico as well, but I think the migration was decidedly to the south, rather than north.

I never understood the point of a burrito bracket at all. Every burrito that I have ever eaten wins the title of "best" burrito in the place and state of mind that I have eaten it.

This guy clearly agrees with me.

Teresa wrote:


I never understood the point of a burrito bracket at all. Every burrito that I have ever eaten wins the title of "best" burrito in the place and state of mind that I have eaten it. 8)

This guy clearly agrees with me.

i completely agree with you teresa. and thanks for the tiny hamster video; it's improved my day immensely!

Hi- Nate just thinks differently than you folks do. I highly suspect that Nate has a mild version of Asperger's, and that burritos are one of his special interests. Just looking at his site, and seeing all the details he gives about how he is going to select the best burritos, tells me that he thinks very methodically.

A bad day at La Pasadita knocks Chicago out of the new Burrito Bracket
Irazu and L'Patron were knocked out in the first round, La Pasadita in the second with a substandard batch of carne asada.

JoelF wrote:A bad day at La Pasadita knocks Chicago out of the new Burrito Bracket
Irazu and L'Patron were knocked out in the first round, La Pasadita in the second with a substandard batch of carne asada.

Can't believe it made it as far as it did. To paraphrase an old Rodney Dangerfield joke, my last carne asada there still had marks where the jockey was hitting it.

=R=

NFriday wrote:Hi- Nate just thinks differently than you folks do. I highly suspect that Nate has a mild version of Asperger's, and that burritos are one of his special interests. Just looking at his site, and seeing all the details he gives about how he is going to select the best burritos, tells me that he thinks very methodically.

Interesting theory, but I heard a Splendid Table interview with the woman who's actually doing the burrito ratings for the 538 blog, so I don't think it has much if anything to do with Nate Silver's personality.

Just read this thread from the bottom up and not until the first post did I realized that I had started the thread.....