The Best of FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. What is art? According to the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, the activity of art is “to evoke in oneself a fee…

The American economy is booming and robust. Just look at the chart below, which shows that the overall unemployment rate — the share of people within the labor …

The chess machines never stop playing.

It has been 1,090 days since the last World Chess Championship. In the meantime, the ancient game has seen a modern resurgence, a swell in popularity driven by …

Alarm bells seemed to sound in teachers’ lounges across America late last year with the debut of ChatGPT — an AI chatbot that was both easy to use and capable o…

When she was hired as a professor by Harvard University in 2013, Lorgia García Peña was the only Black Latina on a tenure track in the university’s Faculty of A…

Fewer Americans of all stripes are getting married. But beneath that overarching trend lies an important distinction: Some groups are merely delaying marriage, …

Inflation is top of mind for Americans. We asked them why they're so worried about it.

Imagine the federal government could lift millions of American children out of poverty with a single program. That program would help parents put nutritious mea…

«The expanded tax credit ended in December 2021, and chances are low it will be renewed. That tells you all you need to know about which is more powerful in Washington — politicians’ biases or actual evidence.»

On May 25, 2020, George Perry Floyd Jr., a 46-year-old Black man, was murdered in broad daylight by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer with the Minneapolis P…

The second half of Iran and Morocco’s tightly contested group match contained nothing too out of the ordinary by World Cup standards. Each side used all three s…

During the 2018 World Cup, Zito Madu pointed out the racially coded language commentators used to describe a match between Poland and Senegal, which didn’t line…

«The physical advantages that supposedly defined the African team’s style of play disappeared as soon as their skin color did.»

When the 2022 World Cup made its debut on Sunday, it kicked off one of the most significant in-game uses of technology in sports history. All tournament long, m…

In his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that he views not only abortion precedent as wrong but …

In much of the United States, the high 80s in Fahrenheit is hot, but it’s not hot-hot. It could even be a day of sweet relief in the South, maybe time for a fam…

Before we get started, do me a favor and grab a pen or a pencil. Now hold it between your teeth, as if you were about to try to write with it. Don’t let your li…

«A failed attempt to replicate a particular experiment doesn’t really tell you anything about the underlying theory, he said; all it tells you is that one particular design works or doesn’t work.»

Americans have spent over 150 years arguing about what kind of history we should teach to our children. In “Schoolbook Nation,” a book that examines the history…

Partway through a postgame video review within the bowels of the arena, referees Cheryl Flores and Robert Hussey hang their heads in dismay and disbelief over a…

Latest forecast of the 2020 presidential election between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden by Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight