The New York Times is adding the popular political statistics blog FiveThirtyEight.com to its lineup.

The newspaper giant will host the blog on its site, and make founder Nate Silver a regular contributor to the newspaper and Sunday magazine.

Silver will retain all rights to the blog, and will continue to run the site.

In a post on the Media Decoder blog, Brian Stelter writes that in addition to writing for the blog, newspaper and magazine “Mr. Silver will also work with the journalists and software developers who create interactive graphics for NYTimes.com.”

The deal is similar to one the Times struck with Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, the co-authors of the book Freakonomics, to bring their Freakonomics blog to NYTimes.com

“Nate won considerable recognition during the 2008 presidential campaign for his timely and prescient reports on the electoral races and on public opinion,” Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “We look forward to his unique perspectives on statistics, covering a wide swath of issues relating to politics, culture and sports.”