“One of the more momentous books of the decade.”—The New York Times Book ReviewNate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation’s foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the … perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read.
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I don’t read a ton of nonfiction, but this one called out to me. It took me a while to get through because it’s hardly a “fun” read (not going to lie, the sports chapters bored me), but it was for the most part fascinating.
My favorite section was where the author characterizes different types of personalities as foxes and hedgehogs and how they react to new information. As someone with a sociology degree, I was particularly interested in the ways society rewards personalities who engage in bad forecasts simply because they’re splashier.
The overwhelming message was that we need to be willing to consider all the information before us, learn how to distinguish between important and irrelevant information, admit when we’re wrong, and constantly update our outlook (statistical forecasts, but this really applies to everything in life).
“The irony is that by being less focused on your results, you may achieve better ones.”
OK, I’ve used statistics in my career and always enjoy a good explanatory read to refresh my grasp of the (broad) topic. But, funny, real world (with baseball, gamblers, politics) AND technical details? I love it!
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.
I learned quite a bit more than I expected from this book.
Don’t think this is an easy read. It has over 600 pages and tons of footnotes. That being said, I am working my way through it slowly, and find the info quite interesting. I will never look at my or other people’s decisions in the same way I used to before I started reading this book.
Intelligent, well argued and extremely interesting.
If you have an analytical disposition and love the information that can be revealed by data, check out this book. It covers the do’s and don’t of analyzing data as well as ways companies try to mislead the public with bad practices.
This book is way to deep into Math and Data stuff that is a turn-off for me.
Makes you aware of your personal bias and how most “experts” are wrong.
Original insights into business and organization
Rambles at great length. Long stretches seem to have little to do with the stated topic. Couldn’t finish it.
An interesting premise, well argued.
This is an excellent book for readers interested in how forecasting all sorts of outcomes from poker, baseball to politics is done. I got a much more detailed knowledge of what makes a good prediction model than I ever had before.
Mr. Silver is an excellent writer. He makes a very complex and nuanced subject easy to understand. He also has a good sense of dry humor that makes reading enjoyable.