Nate Goes to the Oscars

Anyone who followed the elections closely or read my incessant election related posts this past fall is familiar with Fivethirtyeight.com and Nate Silver, the stats guy who single-handedly nailed the election results.

Now Nate has turned his prognosticative powers to the Oscars.

From New York Magazine...

Formally speaking, this required the use of statistical software and a process called logistic regression. Informally, it involved building a huge database of the past 30 years of Oscar history. Categories included genre, MPAA classification, the release date, opening-weekend box office, and whether the film won any other awards.

We also looked at whether being nominated in one category predicts success in another. For example, is someone more likely to win Best Actress if her film has also been nominated for Best Picture? (Yes!) But the greatest predictor (80 percent of what you need to know) is other awards earned that year, particularly from peers (the Directors Guild Awards, for instance, reliably foretells Best Picture).

Drumroll please...

Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire..............99.0%
Milk...........................................1.0%
Frost/Nixon..............................0.0%
Benjamin Button......................0.0%
The Reader...............................0.0%

For all of Nate's logistic regression intensive predictions, click here.