If you are one of those people who are searching for the secret on 'how to predict' then this book is going to disappoint you. In The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don't the author has made it a point to state that there is no such secret in existence. I on the other hand expected to get a lot of information on his whole prediction process, and was not disappointed at all. This is a well researched book, that even includes discussions on problems that can be encountered when one tries to predict many different events.
Whether it is poker, baseball, politics, chess or even just the weather, there are many potential problems involved. Nate covers the Bayesian thinking basics and provides readers with the guidelines to help you make good predictions. You do not really need to memorize any math formulae, however you it maybe advantageous to have a good grasp of probability and general arithmetic. You do not have to be statistician to read or enjoy this book. Most people will be able to use it to figure out which events they can predict and those they cannot. You will also be able to tell where problems may arise and how you can circumnavigate these problems before they occur. The whole idea is that all the information available should be considered before any predictions are made. Throughout the book Nate maintains that any amount of data is of no use when it comes to predictions, if it is not used in context.
Who is Nate Silver? He is a statistician and a writer. He also founded the blog FiveThirtyEight.com for the New York Times, which is now one of their political blogs. He is also the developer of the PECOTA system which was purchased by Baseball Prospectus, and is used for predicting the performance of baseball players. In the last couple of years he became famous for being able to handicap the election polls for the both the presidential as well as the senate races. Time magazine included Nate in their list of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. Nate was also able to closely predict the election in 2008. The way this book is structured makes it easy to read from one chapter to the next without having to go back and review previous chapters. I did however notice that often times he tends to repeat himself throughout the book. Due to the amount of information he shares, most statisticians should be able to duplicate the models discussed in this book. He has included over 56 pages of his notes as well as 20 more pages for the index of the book.
Personally, I really enjoyed the chapter on baseball scouts, and how their perceptions add value to the available data. Overall, this book is very interesting to read. You may find the pace slows down in certain places, as he tries to fully explain his models. Regardless, of whether you are an ordinary reader, an economist or a forecaster you will appreciate the amount of valuable information that Nate Silver shares. The Signal and the Noise is a very informative book, that is well written and loaded with huge amounts of real world data. You may not be able to make your first accurate prediction after you read it, but you will definitely have a better understanding of the whole process.
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