Math whiz finds fame by calling it for Obama

Today's New York Times has an article on Nate Silver, the fivethirtyeight.com guy. It talks about how he predicted Obama would win the democratic nomination and  833 Super-Tuesday delegates at a time when Clinton was up by 20 percantage points in the polls. Obama actually won 848 delegates on Super-Tuesday.

Then Silver predicted Obama would beat McCain. That was in March. Here's the full text.

Forecasting the election using simulations

Here's a cool site that forecasts election results using regression and simulation techniques. Note that many of the percentages you will see on the site are probabilities of winning, rather than percentages of the vote. The site is http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

McCain's use of text analysis

The Times is reporting that Republicans offered an Oxford professor $10K to prove that Obama's autobiography was ghost-written by William Ayers, America's favorite Weatherman. Get the full story here.