Political stats master Nate Silver makes cold, hard Oscar predictions

Can you predict a winner based on mathematical probabilities and equations? If we’re talking about politics and your name happens to be Nate Silver, then the answer is most definitely yes. If we're talking about movies, though, then answer becomes less clear. However, those participating in office Oscar pools this year might want to take heed of the following.

Silver is the brains behind FiveThirtyEight, the New York Times blog devoted to forecasting election results using polls, statistics, and other dry metrics. The celebrity statistician (likely the only person on the planet to hold such a title) rose to prominence in the wake of the 2008 US presidential election, during which he successfully predicted the winners of 49 of the 50 states. Silver again wowed politicos and non-mathletes alike during the 2012 election, calling the winners of all fifty states.

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But Silver doesn’t just apply his mathematics know-how to political races. In between those detailed breakdowns of congressional campaigns and Electoral College throw downs, the stats guru can often be found blogging about the hard numbers behind baseball teams, football championships, and around this time every year, the annual Academy Awards.

This morning, FiveThirtyEight published its predictions for the six major Oscar categories – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Silver suggested that based on his previous Oscar track record (9 out of 12 winning picks, or 75 per cent accuracy) there is no “magic formula” for predicting who will go home with gold trophies on Sunday night, but stressed that there are plenty of similarities between elections and awards ceremonies.

“There are precursors for how the elections will turn out: polls in the case of presidential races, and for the Oscars, the litany of other film awards that precede them,” Silver wrote. “So our method will now look solely at the other awards that were given out in the run-up to the Oscars: the closest equivalent to pre-election polls.”

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Silver uses the various guild award shows that precede the Oscars (like the Writers Guild Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Directors Guild Awards) as the best predictors for who will win, since the membership of said guilds are so-called Hollywood "insiders." Silver’s formula almost totally discounts shows like the Golden Globes, whose winners are chosen by Tinsel Town “outsiders” like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Silver explains his math.

“I weight each award based on the square of its historical success rate, and then double the score for awards whose voting memberships overlap significantly with the Academy."

Square roots and algebraic equations aside, who did Silver end up picking?

Best Picture - "Argo"
Best Director - Steven Spielberg
Best Actor - Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Actress - Jennifer Lawrence
Best Supporting Actor - Tommy Lee Jones
Best Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway

Silver's picks are very much in keeping with how most industry watchers think things will shake out on Sunday night, but somehow the fact that his choices are backed up by numbers and complex calculations makes these nominees seem even more likely to win. The Oscars definitely aren't the same as presidential politics, but it's very difficult to argue with math -- especially when it's coming from a site with a track record like FiveThirtyEight. In politics -- and, apparently, in predicting Oscar winners -- perception is everything.