“The signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t” by Nate Silver

The Washington Post:

Nate Silver is best known as a statistician and election analyst (psephologist) who correctly predicted the winner in 49 of the 50 states during the 2008 presidential race and called all 50 states correctly this past week. He quietly persevered in his election analyses despite a torrent of criticism and invective from a variety of commentators who called the race a tossup or even insisted that Mitt Romney would win handily.

Notwithstanding his track record, however, his book “The Signal and the Noise” is a much more general tome about predictions good, bad and ugly, whose basic outline is straightforward. In the first half, he examines predictions by experts in the fields of finance, baseball, politics, health, weather and the economy. In the second half, he discusses ways in which these predictions might be improved and how they might help clarify issues such as global warming, terrorism and market bubbles.

Read the whole story: The Washington Post