Broken News: Nate Silver predicts lottery numbers, promptly vanishes

NEW YORK--Statistician and journalist Nate Silver, who created the popular poll analysis website fivethirtyeight.com, disappeared almost immediately after successfully forecasting the winning numbers for the New York Mega Millions lottery. The jackpot was worth just over $294 million at the time of Silver's win.

Lottery officials are still trying to determine whether a complex algorithm capable of predicting both the proper date and numerical sequence upon which to wager constitutes a violation of state law.

"Frankly, we're at a loss" said New York State Lottery Commissioner Eliot Glassberg. "If he had tampered with the equipment or the staff, we'd already be arranging a bail hearing. But a remarkable instance of logical conjecture based on extrapolations from a battery of data going back decades? Kind of a gray area. In any event, he'll have to share the jackpot with a mechanic from Albany who won by picking numbers comprised of his Uncle Sully's birthday and the opening day lineup numbers of the Mets infield."

According to friends and family, the 31 year-old Silver, whose near-perfect electoral forecasts brought him national attention in 2008 after six years as a Managing Partner at Baseball Prospectus, gave no indication that he had concocted a method of winning hundreds of millions of dollars.

"These last couple of months, Nate had been spending a lot of time on something he called the 'CM Initiative'," said Silver's writing partner, poker player and political analyst Sean Quinn, who began writing for fivethirtyeight during the 2008 presidential race. "He played that pretty close to the vest, although Nate did eventually tell me that 'CM' stood for 'Cashey Money'."

Added Quinn, "He called me the other night and said he'd be taking some time off. Now that I think about it, he sounded a little drunk. I distinctly remember him saying something about sitting at a Vegas poker table until he was 'too drunk or too dead' to continue. Then maybe something about an island, and maybe a tangible universe of numbers and calculations which he presided over as if he were God? I can't be sure -- it was too hard to understand him through all of that maniacal laughter."

Another frequent contributor to fivethirtyeight, Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, did not seem the least bit surprised by Silver's sudden disappearance.

"Look, in this city, brains like Nate's will probably have you pulling steady 7.5-8 caliber tail. But brains and nine-figure money? Let's just say that if you're looking for Nate, I would start the search in Tensville."

A search of Silver's apartment turned up little. Apart from an extensive library, several custom-built computers, a 216-digit number that contained the true name of God, and likely the largest collection of newspaper box scores ever assembled, investigators found only a hand-written note stating the following:

"I have calculated the odds of a complete and irrevocable collapse of the global economy, and of civilization as we know it, at 3:2. Good luck."

In a haunting coda, the note then asked that the detective reading it to "...please fix your striped blue tie, get those size 10 Rockford boots off the front right corner of my coffee table, stop thinking about the ass of that girl behind the counter at the corner store, and call your wife Shelia about dinner with the Califaros tonight, because there's been a problem. I know all."

As of this writing, said detective is being counseled for mental anguish resulting from the brutal shattering of his notions of causality and fate, as well as the violation of what he had considered private thoughts.

Lottery officials confirmed that Silver had accepted his half of the one-time payout option, worth approximately $76 million after taxes, in the form of a cashier's check.