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50.1% with an error range of ±2%". Such statements give odds on outcomes, including a 17% chance of Romney winning the electoral college. The shares of the popular vote similarly are ranges including outcomes in which Romney gets the most votes. What is highly probable is that the voting shares are in these ranges, but not whose share is highest; that's another probability question with closer odds. From such information, it's up to the consumer of such statements to use that information as best they can in dealing with an uncertain future in an age of information overload. That last idea frames Silver's entire narrative and motivates his pedagogical mission.
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171:, originator of many classical statistical tests and methods. The problem Silver finds is a belief in perfect experimental, survey, or other designs, when data often comes from a variety of sources and idealized modeling assumptions rarely hold true. Often such models reduce complex questions to overly simple "hypothesis tests" using arbitrary "significance levels" to "accept or reject" a single parameter value.
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The book emphasizes Silver's skill, which is the practical art of mathematical model building using probability and statistics. Silver takes a big-picture approach to using statistical tools, combining sources of unique data (e.g., timing a minor league ball player's fastball using a radar gun), with
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he correctly describes the discipline of making predictions, without explicitly invoking the math. He accomplishes this feat even though the prediction methods he describes require more than one kind of mathematics. By leaving out the math, he has reached a broad audience with a compelling book with
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Best
Sellers list as No. 12 for non-fiction hardback books after its first week in print. It dropped to No. 20 in the second week, before rising to No. 13 in the third, and remaining on the non-fiction hardback top 15 list for the following thirteen weeks, with a highest weekly ranking of No. 4. The
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using new data. For Silver, the well-known method needs revitalizing as a broader paradigm for thinking about uncertainty, founded on learning and understanding gained incrementally, rather than through any single set of observations or an ideal model summarized by just a few key parameters. Part of
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is an excellent description of how prediction works. However, he purposefully leaves out the mathematics. In 2012, after his triumph of predicting the outcome of the last two presidential elections and selling his "fivethirtyeight" blog to the New York Times, Nate Silver accomplished what is almost
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Silver would like to see the media move away from vague terminology like "Obama has an edge in Ohio" or "Florida still a toss-up state" to probability statements, like "the probability of Obama winning the electoral college is 83%, while the expected fraction won by him of the popular vote is now
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In contrast, the practical statistician first needs a sound understanding of how baseball, poker, elections or other uncertain processes work, what measures are reliable and which not, what scales of aggregation are useful, and then to utilize the statistical tool kit as well as possible. Silver
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is used to introduce the idea of "calibration," or how well weather forecasts fit actual weather outcomes. There is much on the need for improved expressions of uncertainty in all statistical statements, reflecting ranges of probable outcomes and not just single "point estimates" like averages.
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criticized the book for analyzing the "hard science" physical phenomena of climate trends with the same approach as used to analyze the social phenomena of voter preferences, which he characterized as "laden with subjective and untestable assumptions".
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believes in the need for extensive data sets, preferably collected over long periods of time, from which one can then use statistical techniques to incrementally change probabilities up or down relative to prior data. This
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that learning is the informal process of changing assumptions or the modeling approach, in the spirit of a craft whose goal is to devise the best betting odds on well-defined future events and their outcomes.
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Noah Gordon, "Do We Want to
Believe the Numbers? A Q&A With Nate Silver The FiveThirtyEight founder on broken-windows policing, Max Scherzer, and foxes in the Oval Office,
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Jason Notte, "Nate Silver sees soaring Amazon book sales: The FiveThirty Eight blogger's confident and steadfast Obama forecast gets readers curious and critics furious",
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detailing the art of using probability and statistics as applied to real-world circumstances. The book includes case studies from baseball, elections, climate change,
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historical data and principles of sound statistical analysis, many of which are violated by many pollsters and pundits who nonetheless have important media roles.
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Silver rejects much ideology taught with statistical method in colleges and universities today, specifically the "frequentist" approach of
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book's already strong sales soared right after election night, November 6, jumping 800% and becoming the second best seller on
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in Fall 2013. It was published in
Japanese in November 2013. A Spanish translation appeared in April 2014, under the title
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was first published in paperback in the United States on
February 3, 2015. It contained a new introduction. It reached
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Die
Berechnung der Zukunft: Warum die meisten Prognosen falsch sind und manche trotzdem zutreffen.
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Die
Berechnung der Zukunft: Warum die meisten Prognosen falsch sind und manche trotzdem zutreffen.
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Semnalul și zgomotul: de ce atât de multe predicții dau greș - pe când altele reușesc.
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800:"FiveThirtyEight: The Number of Things Nate Silver Gets Wrong About Climate Change"
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paperback best seller list, ranked No. 4 in the field of
Education in March 2015.
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in hardback under an Allen Lane imprint and in paperback under a
Penguin imprint.
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The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many
Predictions Fail – but Some Don't
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The book includes richly detailed case studies from baseball, elections,
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In praise of the book, Murray Cantor, IBM Distinguished Engineer, wrote
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A Polish edition was scheduled for publication in hardcover in 2015 by
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Murray Cantor, "Filling in the blanks: The math behind Nate Silver's
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A Korean language edition was published by The Quest in July 2014.
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as well as in traditional Chinese characters by Suncolor Press in
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In 2013, an edition was published in Romanian by Publica press:
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as one of the ten best books of nonfiction published in 2012.
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The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction,
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The book was published in simplified Chinese characters by
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Il segnale e il rumore. Arte e scienza della previsione,
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Il segnale e il rumore. Arte e scienza della previsione,
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Sygnal i szum: Sztuka prognozowania w erze technologii
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Sygnal i szum: Sztuka prognozowania w erze technologii
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Published in the United States on September 27, 2012,
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386:Phi Beta Kappa Society book award in science
137:Phi Beta Kappa Society book award in science
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185:a simple formula for updating probabilities
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179:is named for the 18th-century minister
135:The book was the recipient of the 2013
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842:"Phi Beta Kappa book award in science"
503:UK hardback Edition, Allen Lane, 2013
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522:UK paperback edition, Penguin, 2013
240:The book was first released in the
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132:, poker, and weather forecasting.
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405:Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
365:impossible. In his recent book
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825:The Signal and the Noise
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344:Criticism and commentary
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16:2012 book by Nate Silver
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488:Wall Street Journal,
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218:Wall Street Journal
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124:is a 2012 book by
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603:978-7-5086-4114-0
577:Fandango Libri .
542:O sinal e o ruído
491:December 14, 2012
380:In October 2013,
370:lots of examples.
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261:O sinal e o ruído
192:Release and sales
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852:2013-10-10
809:3 November
412:References
257:Portuguese
207:Amazon.com
71:2012-09-27
657:Amazon.es
444:MSN Money
275:version,
52:Publisher
449:Archived
393:See also
143:Synopsis
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296:Beijing
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375:Awards
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101:(2013)
95:Awards
34:Author
271:. An
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
