Nate Silver, the brilliant statistician who successfully and accurate predicted President Barack Obama‘s electoral win in the last presidential election, has set his sights on the Academy Awards … which will be handed out in a lavish ceremony Sunday night. Silver decided to apply his method of statistical predictability to the Oscar race and has revealed which movies and actors he firmly believes will win awards on Sunday night. While we cannot know for sure just yet if Silver is correct, I think it’s wise to put stock in his predictions especially considering how right he usually is.
Nate Silver has quantified baseball, politics, and the Super Bowl (that last one not so successfully)—and now he turns his big geeky brain to the Academy Awards, trying to sort out the signal and the noise for the year’s biggest movies in the New York Times. Just as elections use polls to predict the final outcome, Silver uses the other major awards to survey the field, weighing those awards based on how well they’ve matched with the Oscars in the past. Among Silver’s predictions:
Best Picture: Argo is far and away the favorite.
Best Director: Steven Spielberg with Lincoln tops the survey (but just barely beating Ang Lee for Life of Pi).
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis is also overwhelming for Lincoln.
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway is another big favorite for crying and dying in Les Misérables. “Anne Hathaway [is] about as safe a bet to win for Les Misérables as Mitt Romney was to win Utah,” writes Silver. “If Sally Field or Amy Adams wins instead, it will probably be time for me to retire from the Oscar-forecasting business.”
OMG, I love this so much. You can read Nate‘s full article on his Oscar predictions HERE. I kinda have a huge nerd crush on Nate so I love that he’s doing fun stuff like this for The New York Times. I don’t ever participate in Oscar polls because I’m always terrible at picking winners (the movies/actors that I believe should win don’t always in). But, if I get looped into participating in a poll this year, I’m going to use Nate‘s picks as my crib sheet. The man gave me the head’s up on Obama‘s win so, he has my heart forever.
I love Nate silver!!!!