And, now, some #natesilverfacts

A Dennett post later today, I promise, but I’m terribly amused by the #natesilverfacts meme on twitter.  Here are my favorites:

@mdlevinson: Nate Silver’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson’s name is going to be Hari Seldon. #natesilverfacts

@temiri: Nate Silver once walked over each of the bridges in Konigsberg exactly once. #natesilverfacts

@dilefante: Nate Silver’s samples have only a median and a mode. Because no number would be mean to Nate Silver. #natesilverfacts

@edwardbenson: Nate Silver escaped from a Prisoner of War camp by shrugging and making an independence assumption #natesilverfacts

@edwardbenson: Nate Silver doesn’t keep a calendar. He keeps a giant conditional probability table filled with time-series data. #natesilverfacts

@Smedette: Nate Silver can recite Pi. Backwards. #NateSilverFacts

@clarklab: Statistical margin of error will now be referred to as “Distance from Nate” #natesilverfacts

@perko: When rappers tell the crowd to “make some noise,” all Nate Silver hears is the signal. #natesilverfacts

Silver’s fivethirtyeight blog was visited by ten to twenty percent of NYT website users who looked at anything in the politics section, according to The New Republic.  And in the last week, that figure went to 71%.  Slate has a reasonable debunking of the question on everyone’s lips: Is Nate Silver a Witch?  Silver does the numbers well, but he soars above the political commentariat because the polls are a better prediction of the results than the narratives and gut instincts and goodness-clear-outcomes-are-boring approach of the pundits.

And for the other fun Silver links and tweets:

@KenJennings: Romney could still win this if too many Dems accidentally write-in “Nate Silver” with little hearts around it.

@resnikoff: PEOPLE OF AMERICA DON’T YOU SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING, STOP VOTING LIKE NATE SILVER TELLS YOU TO

@fivethirtynate: Molten variables hiss and roar. On my mind-forge, I hammer them into the greatsword Epistemology. Many are my foes this night.

That last one’s the parody account, don’t forget.  I’ll admit, I’m pretty tempted to put it on a sampler.

Oh, and I can’t leave out xkcd (if you’re not a regular reader, remember to mouse over for the alt-text).

UPDATE: there’s a profile up of the guy behind @fivethirtynate.