If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's gay nerds. Enter Nate Silver, Out magazine's Gay Nerd of the Year Person of the Year. In an interview, the brilliant statistician discussed the motivation behind his work, the gay scene in New York and Chicago, his future (no surprises), and a bubbling disdain for labels.

Like all gay nerds, Silver, 34, likes poker, baseball, and debating Chinese–U.S. relations. “To my friends, I’m kind of sexually gay but ethnically straight,” Silver tells the magazine. “I’m sure that being gay encouraged the independent-mindedness, but that same independent-mindedness makes me a little bit skeptical of parts of gay culture, I suppose.”

Noting the series of rainbow adorned flagpoles memorializing various gay Americans along North Halsted Street in Chicago, Silver recalls, “There was one little plaque for Keith Haring, and it was, like, ‘Keith Haring, gay American artist, 1962 to 1981,’ or whatever [actually 1958 to 1990], and I was like, Why isn’t he just an American artist? I don’t want to be Nate Silver, gay statistician, any more than I want to be known as a white, half-Jewish statistician who lives in New York.”

[via Out]