Summary Of Nate Silver's 'The Signal And The Noise'

The Signal and the Noise

Nate Silver, is a statistician who examines and writes on all sorts of predictions. He got famous due to successfully predicting the 2008 presidential election. Silver is also well known for his political blog and most importantly PECOTA, which is a private system that undertakes the player’s performance based on differentiation with past player seasons. His love for statistics is seen throughout his book where he analyzes data in different ways. We are able to see his work through the essays he writes, which examine how the predictions are made through a variety of fields. His predictions don’t focus on one field, but they range from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism. The readers can essentially focus on the prediction that highly interests them. Silver’s book is about predictions and why some succeed and others fail.

Going back to the introduction in the book, the issue is that Silver discovers a belief in perfect multiple designs; when data often comes from a variety of sources and assumptions are rarely

He gives you glimpses of the conversations he had with those experts. An example, is when Silver spoke to Dr. Bruce Rose the principal scientist and the vice president of the Weather Channel. “The models typically aren’t measured on how well they predict practical weather elements. “It’s really important if, in New York City, you get an inch of rain rather than ten inches of snow. That’s a huge [distinction] for the average consumer, but scientists just aren’t interested in that”(128). The fact Silver adds part of the conversations with the experts he interviewed, makes him credible. Based on the range of his investigation and the quality of his sources, the book’s assertions are supported well as seen through his credibility that he demonstrated when he interviews experts in the different