being the thoughtful and charismatic leader i was, i said, it is, totally down? totally down. , you guys and the ad presidentworld re obama welcoming the russian andident to twitter declared we may not need the red phone anymore because we could use twitter. it is always like that. is what others frame for you and the world after it happens. what youdent is only are experiencing and focused on right now.

my past anden present come together. i was invited to this fundraiser at a children's hospital in the bay area last year. carrell wasl -- there. i showed the photos to him when i got a chance to talk with him. we got a chance to have a brief conversation. we looked at the photocopy of the review and talked about the different people in the group and where they were. .e kept in touch with some he patted me on the back and said, i'm sorry it did not work out for you. [laughter] pathannot draw that looking forward.

you have to figure out what you love to do and what you have conviction about and go do that. so far you guys have gotten where you are by meeting and exceeding expectations. you are awesome. look at you. you look like an amazing, giant flyer. [laughter] here on -- but from out, you have to switch gears. there are no expectations. doing what you love to do, you become resilient because that is a habit you create for yourself. takingate a habit of chances on yourself and making bold choices in service to doing what you love. if on the other hand you do what you think is expected of

you are what you are supposed to or chaosings go poorly look forou will external sources for what to do next. that will be the habit you have created for yourself. you'll be standing there frozen on the stage of your own life. are just a doing a, you will be blindsided. i do not feel like i can stand there and tell you to try to have an impact. , itproblem seems so massive seems impossible to make any impact at all and you end up feeling like you cannot do anything. just thinking about it in iran and north korea, if you go and makes meist,

want to sweat and not just because of this robe that does not seem to have natural fibers in it. [laughter] instead, what i implore you to do is see if you make courageous choices and bet on yourself and put yourself out there, you will have an impact as a result of what you do any do not need to know how that will happen because no one ever does. like to leave you with a metaphor of my early improv days. you are here now and look at everything you have accomplished. it is remarkable. amazing to me. i'm proud of everything you have done. as you get ready to walk out under the bright lights of improvisational stage of the rest of your life, i implore

you to remember those two lessons i learned years ago -- be bold. make courageous choices for yourself. be in the keebler elf factory. what are you afraid of? do not always worry about what your next line is supposed to be. there is no script. live your life. be in this moment. be in this moment. in this moment. 20 years from now, you'll be sitting in a different seat in the stadium. field ande lying in a looking up at the clouds and holding up a patient hand and you will be grading or evaluating a student's essay and obesity on the sidelines of your daughter's soccer practice -- and you will be sitting on the sidelines of your daughter's soccer practice and sitting on the podium. be right there else in that moment. so all of it in.

remember to say thank you. #goblue. [cheers and applause] >> the new school in new york city awarded nate silver an honorary degree in literature at the commencement ceremony. mr. silver is a political pollster and creator of the new york times log. this is about 15 minutes. [cheers and applause]

>> don't go too far. ladies and gentlemen, our commencement speaker, nate silver. [applause] thank you. i'm really humbled to be here today and to have received this degree. it is a gigantic honor. i want to say thank you to the school president and the provost and the rest of the school community. most of all i want to say thank you to the graduates for having thethe fortitude to spend past four years ago like to pursue your passions. misty to your friends and family and the teachers for helping make those -- thank you to your friends and family and the teachers for helping to make

those dreams possible. [applause] to warn the graduates that there are some people out there who do not hold you in the same high esteem that i do. one of them is joel stein. a columnist for time magazine. he cause your generation "lazy, entitled, selfish, and shallow." [cheers and applause] what should we say to his claim? there's no doubt your generation will have to endure some challenges. college graduates in america today face a future that is more uncertain than ever before. in 1994, the department of education, 80% of students with new bachelor degrees are working full-time or part-time a year later. today that figure is only 73%. because degree is still an advantage, but but no longer a

guarantee of a good job or successful career. the good news is that none of this is your fault. the bad news is that we are counting on you to clean up this of the previous generation. has a whole host of problems. it is investing less into the future. education spending is down. infrastructure spending is down. bridges are collapsing. how is it that your generation stands accused of being lazy, entitled, selfish, and shallow? [cheers and applause] it is your standard of living

that has been impacted by the previous generation's mistake. the previous generation has left something else behind. of everyts of data, imaginal field and format. 90% of the data in the world was created in the past two years. here's the catch -- the previous generation is not done a good job of transforming the data into useful knowledge. that will be up to you as well. the new millennium has been characterized by a series of crises -- earthquakes and hurricanes and bubbles and wars. you name it. not all of these could have been prevented. -- seismologists in japan

from my small experience. interdigital, i published a system model for the new york times the pork is outcome of the presidential race. geniuss no particular behind the model. lots of competitors did very well. based on variations of the same approach. the simple model generated an enormous amount of controversy. people wereday, doing more searches for mining the vice president biden.

-- my name then the vice president biden. i was vilified by some republicans. "anof them called me effeminate man with a soft sounding voice." other republicans say the polls were skewed by a grand conspiracy of pollsters. some prominent republican columnist addicted that mitt romney would win by a landslide. it was not just republicans who are giving me a hard time. msnbc host insisted i should be away from laptops and microphones. , electionself clear forecasting is not the most

important concern in the world. it makes for an instructor to -- political polls are simple and objective facts. pundits and could not take an average of them. yourhave they left generation with? a mess. there is no doubt this is a big issue. the probability of statistics are not taught very much in passions and are not taught for a will. -- in many classrooms and are not taught very well. it is not that they do not know statistics. it is that they do not know how much they do not know know. -- we do notple

focus on what politico says. the elite audience, the smart set is small. the elite is not a very good synonym for smart when it comes to politics. [applause] instead, the wave you might learn something from politico elite is figuring out what they do and doing exactly the opposite. is that members -- years studying members of the elite. when he tallied up their scores, he found that they had done barely any better than chimpanzees.

he also found that a certain type did better than the others. eplus by these as boxes instead of hedgehogs. of hedgehogs.ad what does it mean to behave like one of those cute fox'es that can make something of the data we have today jack o? values youaim the have learned here at the new school. es value diversity and independence. i like a wide rage of information. we arenderstand that small creatures in a large and complex universe. they think in terms of probabilities