The Signal and the Noise

Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't

By: Nate Silver

Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain

Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Updated for 2020 with a new Preface by Nate Silver.

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 30. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight.

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 to global pandemics, 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 listen.

©2012 Nate Silver (P)2012 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"One of the more momentous books of the decade." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Mr. Silver, just 34, is an expert at finding signal in noise.... Lively prose - from energetic to outraged...illustrates his dos and don’ts through a series of interesting essays that examine how predictions are made in fields including chess, baseball, weather forecasting, earthquake analysis and politics...[the] chapter on global warming is one of the most objective and honest analyses I’ve seen...even the noise makes for a good read." (New York Times)

"A serious treatise about the craft of prediction - without academic mathematics - cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver's coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism." (New York Review of Books)

Finding the signal in " The Signal and the Noise "

Definitely a must read or listen for anyone that is concerned about what so called experts are saying. We all need to be wary of predictions and statistics especially in the hands of governments and corporations. This is an excellent primer on the topic.

Could've used more signal

A decent book. A little too much on the housing bubble, and a little too much of Silver shilling for his blog, 538. There were a few good chapters: one on baseball, one on chess, and a good introduction to Bayes' Theorem. However, the lead up to the best part of the book (the second half) was entirely too much noise.

The narrator reads this book like a news story. He is dry and unemotional, and often chooses to end his sentences with a strange inflection. For a book of this length it gets tiresome pretty fast.

Should be required reading in every high school

Truly worthwhile content that goes beyond traditional "critical thinking", and has us start to have probabilistic thinking. I just wished that it had been read by the author

Rethink your assumptions.

This book approaches multiple scenarios of life where how much we know is really much less than we understand or at least think we understand. Important to the author makes the material fully approachable for non mathematicians.

Interesting, Especially If You're a Poker Player

Like lots of people, I followed online for two election cycles and came to believe that Nate had the best methods for election prediction. Because of that history, I was very interested in this book when it came out. While there was a lot of interesting information in the book, quite a bit of time is spent on Poker, the way he made a living for several years. Not knowing Poker, those sections were not meaningful to me. His analysis of baseball, another area where he did statistical work, was interesting to me although others may not care about it. The discussions of politics were also interesting to me but they were shorter than I expected. Overall, it's pretty good but no more illuminating than other well know books on prediction that you can find on Audible.

Boring for anyone that’s working with Data professionally

Disclaimer: I’m a data scientist, so I’m pretty biased

Review: I found this book quite boring and the author came off a bit like a charlatan. He loves telling compelling stories, but many of these stories aren’t factual.

A Must Read for Anyone Who Wants to Critically Think

One of the best features of this book is that it doesn’t require knowledge of statistics. The topics that Nate Silver covers include incredibly complex systems (meteorology, economics, etc.) and he could easily get lost in the technical details, but he doesn’t! Excellently balanced between interviews, anecdotes, theory, and practice, this book reads like a story and teaches like a good professor. If you like sports betting, predictions, science, or politics, or ever wondered how experts in these fields come to knowledge, this book is for you!

fantastic intro to Bayesian thought & prediction

As a professional data geek, I learned a ton about Bayesian thought. Really appreciate Silver's dedicated sceptical approach to the world of prediction.

Captivating and informative

This book was an interesting account of the natural limits and underlying processes of human thinking, technology, and how they are used in prediction. If the phrase "big data" annoys you, this book may provide a refuge from misinformed consensus views of problem solving. Mike Chamberlain did a fantastic job narrating this piece, which was likely made easier because the writing and themes of the book were so captivating. After listening to this book, I must admit my views are heavily biased due to the value I place on prediction.

Pattern Recognition

Would you listen to The Signal and the Noise again? Why?

Very sobering information for readers (and listeners) who often believe they recognize patterns where none exist. Mr. Silver utilizes statistical analysis that confirms the outlooks of people like Warren Buffett, Burton Malkiel, and Rolf Dobelli.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The volume of examples in the breadth of so many different fields.

What about Mike Chamberlain’s performance did you like?

Solid performance in a work that described numerous grafts.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

How often we create a very inaccurate story to reconcile why something we witnessed happened.

Any additional comments?

Very irreverent, and seemingly very correct.