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The Signal and the Noise

Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't

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The Signal and the Noise

By: Nate Silver
Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
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 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The groundbreaking exploration of probability and uncertainty that explains how to make better predictions in a world drowning in data, from the nation’s foremost political forecaster—updated with insights into the pandemic, journalism today, and polling

One of The Wall Street Journal’s Ten Best Works of Nonfiction of the Year

“Could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade.”—The New York Times Book Review

Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because 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.

Drawing on his own groundbreaking work in sports and politics, Nate Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how to seek truth from data. In The Signal and the Noise, Silver visits innovative forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball to global pandemics, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He discovers that what the most accurate ones have in common is a superior command of probability—as well as a healthy dose of humility.

With everything from the global economy to the fight against disease hanging on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read. Economics Elections & Political Process Forecasting & Strategic Planning Management & Leadership Mathematics Politics & Government
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Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Very interesting with lots of great examples from different disciplines and fields to help make the concepts clear. Statistics and probability was never something I was good at in school (stopping maths at 16!) but this really helped and provided some of the big ideas to be considering, tying together human psychology and principles of maths excellently to better understand how and why models work and why they are better in some circumstances than in others.

Easy to follow, compelling & educational A*

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The book is great for listening, as its not so technical that it referes to graph or equations, but still delivers the problems in layman terms.

Mike does a great narration of the book.

Great book that is narrated well.

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Data-driven technologies have the power to significantly change our ability to understand and predict the behaviour of systems. They also have the power to lure us into a black hole of wasted effort and frustration.

Through a range of examples and principles, Nate Silver shows how to tell the difference. Should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in data analytics and machine learning.

Well read too. A few words seemed mispronounced, but that might have been a UK-US difference, rather than reading error.

Anyone interested in Data Analytics - read this

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The book came out several years ago and I was worried it was less relevant now or that the material had been covered elsewhere in books that I had read - e.g. Phillip Tetlock’s book. But that is not the case. It remains as fresh and relevant as ever, and has something unique to offer. I had also wondered about Silver’s credentials to comment on all these different types of predictions but he appears to have got on top of the essentials of different disciplines from weather forecasting to earthquake predictions.

If there was one thing that I might have done with less of it was the baseball and other sports betting material but this was still okay.

It also contained one of the clearest explanations of the thesis behind climate change that I’ve heard. However this chapter has been criticised by climate scientists as misleading, as giving too much credence to climate sceptics and cranks, as misrepresenting the IPCC findings and as accusing climate scientists of understanding the uncertainty in forecasts. See https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nate-silver-climate-change_b_1909482

The reading / narration / “performance “ was excellent - fresh, full of expression, witty and fun.

Altogether really worthwhile.

Great book well narrated

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Great read and comparable to other similar books, some very good i sites. Highly recommend.

Excellent read

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