????統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)家內(nèi)特?希爾是個(gè)數(shù)學(xué)天才，卻并非因此而出名。他的成名，是因?yàn)橹涝鯓影褦?shù)學(xué)天才運(yùn)用到真實(shí)世界。由于非常準(zhǔn)確地預(yù)測(cè)了美國(guó)總統(tǒng)大選的結(jié)果，希爾成為全美國(guó)最有名的數(shù)據(jù)達(dá)人。他在去年11月份的美國(guó)總統(tǒng)大選期間，準(zhǔn)確地預(yù)言了50個(gè)州的投票勝負(fù)。2008年，他也猜中了50個(gè)州中的49個(gè)。同時(shí)希爾還把他的大數(shù)據(jù)分析法應(yīng)用到了體育【比如美國(guó)的大學(xué)籃球聯(lián)賽（March Madness）、職業(yè)棒球大聯(lián)盟等（Major League Baseball）】、賭博（今年夏天他將第三次參加世界撲克系列賽）、甚至是約會(huì)。希爾曾經(jīng)給一個(gè)叫Baseball Prospectus的棒球網(wǎng)站寫(xiě)過(guò)文章，現(xiàn)在他擴(kuò)大了涉足的領(lǐng)域。他既是作家，又是政治專(zhuān)家，而且還在《紐約時(shí)報(bào)》（New York Times）網(wǎng)站上開(kāi)了自己的博客“FiveThirtyEight”。

????本周四，希爾作為主講嘉賓在Lithium Technologies公司的年度LiNC大會(huì)上做了有關(guān)數(shù)據(jù)分析的演講。《財(cái)富》雜志（Fortune）對(duì)他進(jìn)行了專(zhuān)訪，請(qǐng)他談了談大數(shù)據(jù)分析的局限性、大數(shù)據(jù)分析在股市中的角色、以及它如何應(yīng)用到約會(huì)中的，甚至還請(qǐng)他預(yù)測(cè)了2016年的美國(guó)總統(tǒng)大選。這次專(zhuān)訪的文字記錄節(jié)選如下：

????財(cái)富：我相信一直都會(huì)有人找你，想讓你幫他們賭贏美國(guó)大學(xué)體育總會(huì)（NCAA）“瘋狂三月”的比賽。

????內(nèi)特?希爾：我沒(méi)有按自己的計(jì)算結(jié)果來(lái)下注，因?yàn)槲矣X(jué)得其他人也可能按我的選擇下注。如果我按照自己的計(jì)算結(jié)果買(mǎi)，我已經(jīng)贏了二等獎(jiǎng)了。

????或許你明年可以收一小筆版權(quán)費(fèi)？

????絕對(duì)的。或者我們可以先拋出一個(gè)假的計(jì)算公式，然后晚一點(diǎn)再拋出一個(gè)真的。哎呀，上一個(gè)里有編碼錯(cuò)誤！（笑）

????你一開(kāi)始是用統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)來(lái)研究和預(yù)測(cè)棒球比賽勝負(fù)，后來(lái)為什么又轉(zhuǎn)向政治了？

????回溯往事的時(shí)候，說(shuō)你當(dāng)初為什么做了某些事比較容易，但說(shuō)出來(lái)的不一定就是當(dāng)初推動(dòng)你往那個(gè)方向走的合理動(dòng)機(jī)。不過(guò)我認(rèn)為，當(dāng)初的部分理由是，我當(dāng)時(shí)為棒球網(wǎng)站Baseball Prospectus工作了五年——從2003年到2008年，這期間我發(fā)現(xiàn)棒球行業(yè)取得了長(zhǎng)足的進(jìn)步。那個(gè)時(shí)代剛開(kāi)始的時(shí)候，和電影《點(diǎn)球成金》（Moneyball ，由一本小說(shuō)改編成的電影）里描寫(xiě)的時(shí)代非常像，當(dāng)時(shí)統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)家和傳統(tǒng)人士之間的矛盾很緊張。人們擔(dān)心會(huì)有一堆宅男沖出來(lái)?yè)屪咚麄兊娘埻搿，F(xiàn)在情況完全反了過(guò)來(lái)。事情并不是像你雇了一個(gè)統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)家，然后偷偷把他藏在某個(gè)地方。而是每支球隊(duì)——幾乎是每支球隊(duì)，當(dāng)然也有例外——在它的組織內(nèi)部的各個(gè)級(jí)別上都有人懂?dāng)?shù)據(jù)分析。

????我看到統(tǒng)計(jì)分析方法在短短幾年的時(shí)間里進(jìn)步得很快。而政治報(bào)道玩的就是語(yǔ)言藝術(shù)。我發(fā)現(xiàn)無(wú)論是關(guān)于政治的新聞報(bào)道本身，還是從政治家們嘴里說(shuō)出來(lái)的話，有很多都是在胡扯。所以當(dāng)時(shí)我覺(jué)得時(shí)機(jī)已經(jīng)成熟了，可以把某些非常基本的分析工具用在關(guān)于選舉的新聞報(bào)道上。

????Statistician Nate Silver isn't famous because he's a mathematical genius. (Although, he is.) Silver's well-known because he knows how to apply his craft to the real world. The country's most popular data cruncher is known for his spot-on election predictions -- he accurately called the winner in all 50 states of November's presidential election; in 2008, he went 49 for 50 -- but Silver's big data analytics have also translated to the worlds of sports (March Madness, Major League Baseball), gambling (Silver will play in his third World series of Poker event this summer), and even dating. Silver once wrote for the baseball website Baseball Prospectus but has since expanded his offerings; he is now a published author, a political pundit, and the creator of his very own New York Times blog, FiveThirtyEight.

????Silver was in San Francisco Thursday to talk analytics as the keynote speaker at Lithium Technologies' annual LiNC Conference. Fortune sat down with him to talk about big data's limitations, its role in the stock market, how it applies to dating, and even his predictions for the 2016 presidential election. A lightly edited transcript follows.

????Fortune: I'm sure you get people coming up to you all the time to discuss how you helped them win their NCAA March Madness pool.

????Nate Silver: I went against my bracket in my own pool because I thought other people would be using it. I would have gotten second place if I had taken my own advice.

????Maybe take a small royalty fee next year?

????Absolutely. Or we need to put out a fake bracket [first], and then put out a real one [later]. Oops, there was a coding error! [Laughs]

????You started out using stats to better understand and predict success in baseball -- why did you move towards politics?

????Of course it's easy to say in retrospect why you did certain things instead of what rational motivations were pushing you in that direction in real time, but I think part was that I was involved working for Baseball Prospectus for about five years -- 2003 to 2008 -- and you saw a great amount of progress in the baseball industry during that time. The start of that era was the era described in [the book-turned movie] Moneyball where you really had a lot of tension between stat-heads and traditionalists. People were terrified that nerds would come over and take their jobs. And really now that's been totally reversed, where it's not just that you have some stat-head that you've hired and have locked into a closet somewhere, but that every team -- almost every team, there are some exceptions -- understands analytics at different levels of the organization.

????But seeing how quickly that progressed in a span of just a few years, and how behind politics coverage seemed to be where it's all about the narrative -- there's a lot of bullshit basically both in the news coverage of politics and from politicians themselves -- so it seemed like it was ripe to apply some very basic analytics tools to the coverage of elections.