I would recommend this book a friend. While this book has some technical aspects it's very accessible. It covers the topic of forecasting and prediction extremely well.

I can't think of a book I could compare to Signal and the noise.

I thought all of the characters were similar actually.

I thought a lot of the introductory content was moving.

The real-world examples for each concept made complex theories and concepts easy to understand

If you want to learn about why things work in the world, this is a fantastic book! Get it, it’s worth it!

While missing the point.
This book is very hard to follow. It feels like there is not enough material and the author is blowing time and filling pages with useless details.

I'd rather go for something by Michael Lewis or Malcom Gladwell

Nate gives us some imortant information about both the math and human limitations behind bad predictions. That may sound useless untill you remeber that everything from sports betting to the communists trying another scheme to start their economy moving is wrapped in a prediction. When we start a business or try to stop the next Muslim extremist attack, we are predicting. This book will help do it better.

We make important predictions every day. How to do it better.

The author is a liberal to the core so he shows some of the same blind spots that he points out in others, but seems to challenge himself not to. Unless you are a huge baseball fan you will get bored in the hours of inside baseball (pun) and some of his other examples, but it is where he cut his teeth. But since we need at least the basic point of this book so at least get an abrieviated version.

Annoying voice, nasal, harsh, almost painful. I get the eager nerdiness idea, this is too much.

I agree with reviewers who called it a rehash, recommending Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. I usually enjoy these sort of books, I'll read anything by Lewis, Gladwell, Taleb, Khaneman, Airely, etc... and I've listened to weaker books with a few good ideas even poorly written, I'll even bite on the lesser, copycat books, OK. If Silver knows something new it's not here. Either he's holding back for the next couple of books (I doubt it) or he doesn't have anything new. It's like his pre-Presidential articles in the New York Times-a storm of sources, obvious conclusion and a little Statistics 101.

Initially I was skeptical of the claim of his predicting ability, but I was open to learning more. I gave it a chance. I'm halfway through and haven't heard much of anything new or interesting. I don't know if I can finish listening.

Mr. Silver rehashes old stories better told by Michael Lewis. The rating agency issue in his first chapter has little to do with Bayesian Theory and more to do with how individuals were compensated. The issue is that the system was designed so that the individual players involved in the system could win when the system itself failed. He unfortunately has the wrong issue for an interesting theorem.

I was loving it until Chapter 8. Silver makes a simple serious mistake regarding the hedge bet on the Lakers winning the championship. Does he do this in other chapters? I don't know. A 12 year old with a feel for numbers should be able to pick this one off, and removes any credibility the book had.

Freakonomics, The Black Swann, Blink - all of whom have taken a fall in my eyes for their twisting of the truth for a good story, but this mistake by Silver is the most egregious of all of them.

Say it aint so, Nate!

The first half is excellent, trhe second is a mess. The global warming section is pointless.
His bias shines through esp. when he sez that the the democrats were more in the politcal center. Hey nat whats the center?

maybe

good

maybe on MNBC

I wish I would have gotten Caro Power Broker

no

no

not his fault the material sucked

just really a poor book for audio; i should have known better