"Science is very quantitative but there's not a lot of science journalism that helps make sense of it. See the daily news reports of "X makes you 20% more likely to give you cancer" for example. I don't imagine that Nate Silver can do anything there that good scientists aren't already doing, but if Silver is able to explain it in an accessible way that'll be a net positive for the world. Ditto for economics. Life is vague, but it totally lends itself to this sort of analysis and is probably the most interesting area he could delve into, if he can get the data. OkCupid used to have a data analyst who'd post ridiculously fascinating stuff on their "OkTrends" blog, which is still online though sadly no longer updated. The baby name wizard blog is another fascinating one along those lines. I'm sure Nate Silver can come up with interesting stuff provided he can get access to similarly large data sets." - Eric P