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

by Silver, Nate

• ISBN13: 9781594204111
• ISBN10: 159420411X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-09-27
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The

Summary

Nate 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. The New York Timesnow publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation's most influential political forecasters. 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.

Author Biography

Nate Silver is a statistician, writer, and founder of The New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight.com. Silver also developed PECOTA, a system for forecasting baseball performance that was bought by Baseball Prospectus. He was named one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
A Catastrophic Failure of Prediction	p. 19
Are You Smarter Than a Television Pundit?	p. 47
All I Care About is W's and LÆs	p. 74
For Years You've Been Telling Us that Rain is Green	p. 108
Desperately Seeking Signal	p. 142
How to Drown in Three Feet of Water	p. 176
Role Models	p. 204
Less and Less and Less Wrong	p. 232
Rage Against the Machines	p. 262
The Poker Bubble	p. 294
If You Can't Beat'em …	p. 329
A Climate of Healthy Skepticism	p. 370
What You Don't Know Can Hurt You	p. 412
Conclusion	p. 446
Acknowledgments	p. 455
Notes	p. 459
Index	p. 515
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