Name: The Signal and the Noise
ISBN: 9780143125082

Nate Silver

The founder of FiveThirtyEight.com challenges myths about predictions in subjects ranging from the financial market and weather to sports and politics, profiling the world of prediction to explain how readers can distinguish true signals from hype, in a report that also reveals the sources and societal costs of wrongful predictions.

Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't

The Signal and the Noise

Jeff Sexton

Solid Application of Statistics. I'm a math geek who has casually followed Silver's work since he came on the national radar after the 2008 Presidential election. In this book, he uses his own mathematical background and many interviews to show how probabilistic statistics (vs more deterministic statistics) gives us great insight into a wide range of issues, from the mundane yet popular topics of poker and baseball - things he has personal experience with using statistics on - to the seemingly more substantial issues including weather forecasting, political polling, climate change and even terrorism. And overall, he is very careful to stick to his central point: follow the numbers, no matter where they lead - which he calls the "signal". Very highly recommended for anyone trying to have a genuine discussion on really almost any topic.

This work explores the history, art and science of prediction.

The Art and Science of Prediction

Jowanza Joseph

This book is fantastic for anyone looking into Forecasting.  Nate Silver did an incredible job at explaining things in a rather precise way and provide some compelling examples.  It is also a tribute to Bayesian reasoning, which I ascribe to :).

The signal and the noise

David V.

What fun read about predictions on various fields from nature, politics and sport. Been fan of Nate Silver through fivethirtyeight.com and sports predictions but he has grown ever bigger in my mind. If I should review the whole book with one sence the quote from John Maynard quote "If facts change, I change my mind". Actually, 'm putting this in my social media bio.

Chris Aldrich

Given the technical nature of what Nate Silver does, and some of the early mentions of the book, I had higher hopes for the technical portions of the book. As usual for a popular text, I was left wanting a lot more. Again, the lack of any math left a lot to desire. I wish technical writers could get away with even a handful of equations, but wishing just won't make it so.

The first few chapters were a bit more technical sounding, but eventually devolved into a more journalistic viewpoint of statistics, prediction, and forecasting in general within the areas of economics, political elections, weather forecasting, earthquakes, baseball, poker, chess, and terrorism. I have a feeling he lost a large part of his audience in the first few chapters by discussing the economic meltdown of 2008 first instead of baseball or poker and then getting into politics and economics.

While some of the discussion around each of these bigger topics are all intrinsically interesting and there were a few interesting tidbits I hadn't heard or read about previously, on the whole it wasn't really as novel as I had hoped it would be. I think it should be required reading for all politicans however as I too often get the feeling that none of them think at this level.

There was some reasonably good philosophical discussion of Bayesian statistics versus Fisherian, but it was all too short and could have been fleshed out more significantly. I still prefer David Applebaum's historical and philosophical discussion of probability in Probability and Information: An Integrated Approach though he surprisingly didn't mention R.A. Fisher directly himself in his coverage.

It was interesting to run across additional mentions of power laws in the realms of earthquakes and terrorism after reading Melanie Mitchell's Complexity: A Guided Tour, but I'll have to find some texts which describe the mathematics in full detail. There was surprisingly large amount of discussion skirting around the topics within complexity without delving into it in any substantive form.

For those with a pre-existing background in science and especially probability theory, I'd recommend skipping this and simply reading Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman's work is referenced several times and his book seems less intuitive than some of the material Silver presents here.

This is the kind of text which should be required reading in high school civics classes. Perhaps it might motivate more to be interested in statistics and science related pursuits as these are almost always at the root of most political and policy related questions at the end of the day.

For me, I'd personally give this three stars, but the broader public should view it with at least four stars if not five as there is some truly great stuff here. Unfortunately a lot of it is old hat or retreaded material for me.

Jeni Enjaian

This book took a little longer to read than I expected although not quite as long as I hypothesized after starting to read the book. (A good number of the 535 listed pages are references, index pages, and endnotes.)
As a self-proclaimed data nerd, I added this book to my to read list many years ago when Nate Silver first shot to national attention with his 2008 election prediction results. I found the same sort of nerdy satisfaction as I read this book although I did have to slow down a few times when Silver included types of mathematical explanations for which I do not have prior exposure to and thus felt a bit confused.
Overall, I really enjoyed his analysis of different types of data used for predictions, especially his chapter on epidemics in light of current events. 
I definitely recommend for all the social historians and data nerds like myself.

Sarvagnan S

You should be a bayesian, here's why. That's the message of this book, a message it sells very well. This is a must read.

Adam

The first 3 chapters of this one were my favorites.

Ilia Markov

This is a great book and a must-read for everyone who hasn't delved really deeply in the topic of statistics - and I believe knowledge of the field if paramount to everyone today. However, as such the book is pretty general and even somewhat basic.

Michael Camilleri

Eminently readable overview of the merits of probabilistic thinking. If that sounds like something beyond your ken, you are the target audience for this book.

The Signal and the Noise Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't

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