Former New York Times blogger Nate Silver took the wraps off his new FiveThirtyEight site on Monday, offering a series of explanatory and data-driven stories on everything from toilet-seat covers to why hockey great Wayne Gretzky had it easy. In an introductory essay, Silver said that the site — which he has been building since he left the Times for ESPN eight months ago — would be an improvement on much of the data journalism practised by traditional reporters, because FiveThirtyEight writers will “ask the right questions of the data.”

Silver said that he doesn’t want his site to replace or supersede traditional journalism, but to fill what he sees as a “need in the marketplace” for rigorous data-oriented journalism. The site’s logo, a stylized fox head, comes from what Silver says is an ancient Greek aphorism about how the hedgehog knows one large thing, while the fox “knows many…