> Our logo depicts a fox (we call him Fox No. 92) as an allusion to a phrase originally attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” We take a pluralistic approach and we hope to contribute to your understanding of the news in a variety of ways.
As commenters pointed out in an earlier New York Mag article (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/nate-silver-int...) and that Silver alludes to via hyperlink, the "hedgehog vs. the fox" quote could be interpreted as coming out in favor of the hedgehog:
> The fox knows many tricks; and the hedgehog only one; but that is the best one of all.
I think if 538 had picked a hedgehog as its mascot, it would still make sense: it's the pundits/prognosticators who have "many tricks", whereas Silver is proposing just one good trick -- empirical data analysis -- which happens to be effective and valuable in all contexts.
As commenters pointed out in an earlier New York Mag article (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/nate-silver-int...) and that Silver alludes to via hyperlink, the "hedgehog vs. the fox" quote could be interpreted as coming out in favor of the hedgehog:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Archilochus
> The fox knows many tricks; and the hedgehog only one; but that is the best one of all.
I think if 538 had picked a hedgehog as its mascot, it would still make sense: it's the pundits/prognosticators who have "many tricks", whereas Silver is proposing just one good trick -- empirical data analysis -- which happens to be effective and valuable in all contexts.