Book in English version
“One of the most important books of the decade.” – The New York Times Book Review
Nate Silver developed an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, accurately predicted the 2008 US presidential election, and became a national blogger before his 30th birthday. His near-perfect prediction of the 2012 election cemented his reputation as a leading US political analyst. Silver is the founder and editor-in-chief of the website FiveThirtyEight.
Based on his own groundbreaking work, Silver explores the world of forecasting in this book – and how we can extract a genuine signal from a sea of data noise. Most predictions fail, often at enormous cost to society, because our understanding of probability and uncertainty is flawed. Both experts and laypeople often mistake confident statements for accurate ones – but it is precisely this overconfidence that frequently leads to failure. As we develop a better sense of uncertainty, our predictions can improve. This is the so-called "forecasting paradox": the more humility we show toward our ability to predict, the more successfully we can shape the future.
In his quest for truth through data, Silver meets some of the most successful forecasters – from hurricane researchers to baseball analysts, from pandemic experts to poker players, from the stock exchange floor to the basketball court, from Washington to Wall Street. He reveals how these people think, what patterns they recognize, and what connects them. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What principles have they identified? And are their predictions truly accurate?
Silver discovers surprising commonalities and unusual connections. Sometimes it's not how absolutely accurate a forecast is that matters – but how well it performs compared to the competition. In other cases, the art of prediction is still very rudimentary – and dangerous.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters usually possess a deep understanding of probability, coupled with humility and hard work. They recognize what is predictable – and what is not. And they perceive a thousand small details that bring them closer to the truth. This is precisely why they succeed in distinguishing the signal from the noise.
Given that everything – from the stability of the global economy to the fight against terrorism – depends on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver's insights are essential reading.
