The Signal and the Noise

Why So Many Predictions Fail - but Some Don't

De: Nate Silver

Narrado por: Mike Chamberlain

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

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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)

Great book - boring narrator

I love Nate Silver and thoroughly enjoyed this book. However, the audiobook was very difficult to get through at times, as the narrator’s voice was putting me to sleep.

FASCINATING

Data science for dummies.
A very entertaining intro for those of us who aren't techno-current. Lots of different fields of enquiry used for examples. Enough of the author's personality to keep it lively.
Fun for all --

Loved it

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book does a good job giving insight into the difference between noise and signal and the value of being able to tell the difference

Numbers junkie explains addiction in plain English

Any additional comments?

I enjoyed this book, but I'm a bit of a numbers junkie myself. Silver does a great job of explaining complicated subjects in plain English--good enough to make best-seller lists. He explains predictions for politics, weather, baseball, poker, economics including the stock market, earthquakes, global climate change, and terrorism. He ties this together with Bayesian statistics. He describes this in terms that anyone can apply. Along the way he explains over fitting and under fitting of models. He describes the advantages of models based on physical principles. I enjoyed the way he used betting terms (hedgehog and fox) to describe political pundits. I would make this book required reading for a statistics class. It won't thrill everyone, but anyone who is curious about predictions will enjoy it.

interesting but too long

i enjoyed this book but I can say it was sometimes unnecessarily long. the examples are long but if you really want to understand they are really deep examples.

Mostly a noise, ironically

Too many unnecessary and unrelated information to make a point. I was hoping it ends after all the talks about baseball, but then it happen again and again with poker and others. The point of this book is just in the summary, all the rest is unnecessarily long narration. I can't understand why this is a bestseller, and I'm open for ideas that might change my mind.

Good Read

It's a good read on the role of forecasting, prediction and statistics but the author used a lot of sports analogies, which may not appeal to those who are not that much into sports and in my view this will appeal a lot to male readers than female.

Good story,no formulas

The stories were interesting. Yet I was expecting more explanations, tips, hints on how to filter signal from the noise. The conclusion- it is hardly possible.

very uneven

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

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?

Would you ever listen to anything by Nate Silver again?

maybe

What three words best describe Mike Chamberlain’s voice?

good

Could you see The Signal and the Noise being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

maybe on MNBC

Any additional comments?

I wish I would have gotten Caro Power Broker

Statement: People are jealous of Nate Silver

For many of us who don't have a Masters or PHD in Statistics, Nate Silver's Intelligent hard work, provides us with a perspective that "appears" be hard to get from other sources. I appreciated his approach to first level interviews of vested experts involved in summarizing these complex problems to the "audience" (the world people). That's my vote.