The Signal and the Noise
A review of

The Signal and the Noise

The Art and Science of Prediction

Nate SilverPenguin Books • 2013

Don’t Rely on Predictions

by David Meyer

Statistician and founder of The New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver explains predictions and tells you when to trust them – especially your own.

Statistician, writer and founder of The New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Nate Silver also developed PECOTA, a system for forecasting baseball performance that Baseball Prospectus later purchased. Time magazine named Silver one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People. 

Silver’s singular combination of rigorous, imaginative research, daring predictions and refusal to take himself seriously – though he is dead serious about his results – led to uniformly positive reviews for his book. The New York Review of Books called this, “One of the more momentous books of the decade… A serious treatise about the craft of prediction – without academic mathematics – cheerily aimed at lay readers.” The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Mr. Silver’s breezy style makes even the most difficult statistical material accessible.”


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