These Numbers Prove That Nate Silver Made A Genius Decision Ditching The New York Times For ESPN

Yesterday it came out that statistical wunderkind Nate Silver would be leaving the New York Times at the end of his contract to move his highly acclaimed FiveThirtyEight blog to ESPN, with some politics work at sister network ABC.

Frankly, the move is brilliant for several reasons. 

Silver first got public attention after he sold his sabermetric PECOTA model to Baseball Prospectus. His interest originally lay in the statistical modeling of sports. His leap into politics came when he realized that writing about actual statistical facts about politics in lieu of pundits' gut reactions was something the American electorate secretly craved. 

Still, after two consecutive presidential elections called with impeccable accuracy, it's understandable that Silver may want to spend the next years focusing on sports instead of the daily play by play of Congress' "will-they-or-won't-they" relationship with passing legislation. 

Anyway, there are a ton of excellent reasons for Silver to jump ship from the Times to ESPN. Here are a few of them. 

First, this is a massive audience increase. 

While Silver went mainstream at the Times, at ESPN he'll have a larger audience than the Grey Lady could ever hope to offer. 

Just take a second an look at the search volume difference between "New York Times" and "ESPN"

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/looking-at-the-numbers-nate-silver-ditching-the-times-for-espn-is-genius-2013-7#ixzz2Zbm4PDZe