The Signal and the Noise
by Nate Silver
Silver on prediction across weather, earthquakes, economics, poker, chess, terrorism and elections: why most predictions fail, Bayesian thinking, overfitting, and the value of humility and probabilistic forecasts. It is substantive and readable and it taught a wide audience to think in probabilities.
Read it if…
you want to understand prediction and think more probabilistically.
Skip it if…
you want a short book; it is comprehensive.
Three things you will actually use
- Think in probabilities; update as you learn.
- Beware overfitting: the model that explains everything predicts nothing.
- Humility improves forecasts.
Do this first
Make your next prediction as a probability and update it as evidence arrives.
Our verdict
Substantive and readable.
Compare with other Mindset books
Noise
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein · Mindset
Important and demanding.
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