We will discuss Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise at our meeting on Wednesday, March 19, 2014, at 4:15p.m. in the GAHS library. Please post questions, comments, concerns, criticism, and the like on this blog prior to, during, or after our meeting (before March 26th if you want grade-replacement credit). All questions and responses should indicate an active reading of the text and function to move the conversation forward. (Note: surface-level or obvious questions and responses will not count as participation for grade replacement.)
Those of you unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts may participate in the discussion below by posting a discussion question and offering a detailed response, or by responding to two questions already posted. The note above applies here as well, so heed it!
Nate Silver covers a wide range of topics throughout his book from weather forecasting to house market predictions to poker predictions. Where does Silver gain his credibility in all of these topics? Does he even have credibility?
These are all varied topics that differ from the others. It would be difficult for one individual to be an expert on all of them, but Silver proves otherwise. He has acquired an innate sense of habitual knowledge by using sources of historical facts and principles of statistical analysis in order to make predictions. His credibility spurs from the positions he has fulfilled and awards he has received as signs that people can trust his predictions and claims. Nate Silver is an American statistician and writer who analyzes baseball and elections. He is currently the editor-in-chief of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight blog and a Special Correspondent for ABC News. In April 2009, he was named one of The World’s 100 Most Influential People by Time. An example of his incredible accuracy is his November 2008 presidential election predictions in which he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 state. As a result, Silver gained further attention and commendation. The only state he missed was Indiana, which went for Barack Obama by one percentage point. He correctly predicted the winner of all 35 U.S. Senate races that year.
What caused the housing bubble? What is the danger or a bubble?
Multiple individual factors led to the housing bubble, and to the recession, for example insufficient regulation, ignoring of risk, and irrational behavior; when bankers made deals own their own or false loans. The situation seems to have come from the factors all being present simultaneously (by chance), and because of the inaccurate models in society no one was able to predict the situation occurring.
Ultimately the banks carelessness towards loan supervision. They were very quick to offer funding to anyone, even those with minuscule loan experience, and money. It didn’t take long before people were unable to pay the loans back, leaving the banks in debt, as well as homeowners our of luck. In addition this occurrence was new, the economy was doing well at the time, so people weren’t concerned with financial responsibilities, and people under estimated their financial situations.
At the meeting, we discussed a little about how Nate Silver seemed to cut out any unnecessary or extraneous information. He dived right into the facts and implementation. What do you think this does to his potential audience? Does it cut out anyone who is less informed? Does it exclude anyone without great mathematical knowledge?
Nate Sliver’s intended audience was really anyone who makes predictions, whether it has to do with the weather or poker. He wanted to share with the audience his view on statistics and predictions. He also wanted to emphasize the limitations people put on themselves that keep them from seeing the truth behind the noise, holding them from making accurate predictions. If he included extraneous information, it would go against his claim that accurate predictions result from the ability to overlook the noise. So his exclusion of unnecessary information does not exclude anyone without mathematical knowledge, because his purpose is to share the concept of making accurate predictions, not how to use numbers.
Nate Silver cutting out information that he felt was unnecessary to include in his book illustrates his advanced theories and complex mind. The author’s idea of combining sources of unique data with historical facts and principles of statistical analysis in order to make predictions is an interesting phenomenon. However, it was a difficult book to read in that his book was written with such eloquent terms and statistical data. I enjoyed the psychological aspect of it, while the statistical and probabililty analysis components were harder to keep up with. In relation, other readers may feel the same way as I when reading this book. His potential audience of younger and less informed/educated readers may not be able to grasp his concepts. This does not mean the reader is not smart enough to understand the concept, but rather they cannot keep up with the vast amount of mathematical knowledge Silver requires of them in order to understand his theory. He may be excluding people who could benefit and learn from his reasoning of probability, such as blue-collar workers, younger students, sports fanatics, poker players, etc.
In chapter two, Silver mentions that political pundits and experts usually don’t do much better than chance when forecasting political events, yet these “experts” are still popularly watched on television and listened to on the radio during the political election season. Should the shows that broadcast these “experts” stop bringing in these pundits? If pundits should still be allowed to provide their opinions on these shows, should such pundits require a “background check” prior to public appearances in order to assure that they have a history of relatively accurate predictions?
Continuing with the above thought, should television and radio shows only hire foxes, not hedgehogs? If so, how can they tell the difference when deciding which experts to bring in?
Television and radio shoes should only hire foxes because we do not want our main image prognosticators to be only thinking of their views and not taking in new information. People get mad easily and while nobody can always predict the right information 100% of the time, having foxes taking a multitude of approaches to a problem would increase the chances of having a better broadcast. With that said, I do not know how they could tell the difference. In an interview portions, one could ask them how they would approach a situation, but how is one to know they are not lying, portraying them self as a fox when they are really a hedgehog?
That’s a great point. I think that is the reason we have so many hedgehogs that are hired to be political pundits!
An interesting aspect of the conversation we had at OBS was the use of repetition within the book. Myself and the others who came to the meeting realized the reason for the use of repetition, but I would like to know what other opinions are.
Why do you think Silver’s A Signal and the Noise seemed to become a repetitive read?
I feel like Nate Silver knew he had a tough job when writing this book. He had to find a way to engage readers without overwhelming them. The first interesting thing about his repetition is that it was only one idea. If he had included a new theory for every chapter in the book, readers would be overwhelmed and probably wouldn’t understand all of the information being thrown at them. Silver repeats his one idea over and over, applying it to many different fields, so that if a reader (like myself) doesn’t understand it when he is referring to politics, he or she might have a “light bulb moment” when he is applying it to sports. Silver’s repetition is done for the sake of appealing to a wider audience, even though it does seem rather annoying to some readers.
I believed he became repetitive in the book because he wanted to the book to be ubiquitous so that his complicated ideal could be explained to a broader audience. The repetition allows him to explain his thesis in different scenarios and with different scenarios there is a greater chance of reader understanding his ideals.
I don’t think Nate Silver was as repetitive in content as he was in his method of explaining each chapter and scenario. It seemed as though he used a precise system in every chapter; first discussing background information on the modern-day scenario, then explaining multiple methods used in the specific type of predicting, and finally explaining why the method does or does not work, sprinkling the chapter with graphs and statistics throughout the explanations. I believe Nate Silver did this to have familiarity in each new topic that is presented. The repetition allows him to jump into each new topic and explain his discoveries on each subfield of predictions in a systematic way. It provides for a much easier read for the audience as they know what to expect in each new chapter.
When researching the book before committing to reading it fully, I found a few criticism of the predictions and methods to reaching Silvers’ many conclusions. For example, I read that the book was “laden with subjective and untestable assumptions” in the climate trends section. I also read that Silver confused the practice of using the Bayes theorem with the “Bayesian inference”. Are these criticisms true or should they be disregarded?
With Silvers high level of intelligence, it can be easy for someone that doesn’t have a strong math understanding to get lost. Since Silver is great at math and statistics, he can list all of these methods and give a great description about them because that’s just how intelligent he is. It shows that he has a great understanding on what he is talking about and he’s not just it up. Sure the book can be a little bit overwhelming at some points, but it just shows that the reader really has to follow along and concentrate on understanding the book. I believe that the criticisms of Silvers book should be disregarded because the people that are going to criticize the book are the people that have a hard time understanding it.
I find it interesting that even with all of our modern day statistics and computer models, Silver praises Bayesian statistics, a fairly old method.
To forward this comment into more of a question, why do you think Silver falls back on Bayesian statistics, rejecting some of the newer methods established today?
With all of the new modern day technology, it is hard to get a good read on what is right and what is wrong. In Silvers book he praises that old method because he believes that the older the method, the more reliable it can be. Sure a computer can tell you statistic you want to see, but its not all entirely true. Silver believes the older the method, the more reliable its going to be. I really like how silver included Bayesian’s statistics in his book.
I did not find it interesting, because the Bayesian statistics have history to them. To understand and expand knowledge on a topic, one must be knowledgeable about the foundation of the knowledge before expanding and improving on it.
Silver falls back on the Bayesian method because he doesn’t believe that new technology and modern day statistics are as good as that method. Technology sometimes is only as smart as the user but older methods are more trustworthy because they are made to work.
I didn’t think much of it. Even though the new models lay out all the statistic probabilities, Silver only qualifies the Bayesian, for it’s accurateness in the past. I admire that he takes into account computer error. Silver is only willing to accept something that has actually happened/proven true in real life, as opposed to a hypothetical model or scenario.
What is significant about Nate Silver choosing the fox is that foxes keep open minds unlike hedgehogs, they’re the opposite. Foxes therefore produce better, more accurate predictions. Since Silver is discussing predictions and opinions he chooses the fox because they keep more open minds than the hedgehogs do.
Also, Nate Silver refers to himself as a fox because foxes are cunning and intelligent. They are willing to think outside of the box, unlike the common people or hedge hogs. He shows that he is more like a fox through his analysis of everyday things that he could predict. For example, he shows ways for common people to predict random events like playing poker; however, such calculations seem lengthy and most people would not have time to go through such a process before making simple decisions.
Nate Silver, puts lots of emphasis on frequency calibration, especially when talking about the weather predictions. What did you guys think about this striking fact?
I thought it was so interesting to find out Silver’s statistics of the calibration of how closely varied the amount that the weather prediction’s percentage would say (for instance rain) would be with the amount of times it actually came true.
After reading Nate Silver’s The Single and The Noise I gained a new view on how the statistics and predictions that are presented to me on a daily basis through weather, political polls, and baseball are formed. Nate Silver offers a formula for his reader to be able to follow called the Bayes’s Theorem to present a way for individuals to use in their own lives to find the probability of something occurring at a certain time. He uses examples such as poker or the probability their will be a terrorist attack on a given day. While he presents it in a very logical way and takes his readers through a step by step process it seems very formulaic and something that an average individual would not be able to process in the amount of time one needs to make a decision in weather to fold in poker or any other time in which a decision needs to be made quickly.
I definitely feel more informed on the prediction process having read this book. I understood a fair Amount of baseball predictions from the movie “Moneyball” but this gave a different look and investigation into the game. I understand what you mean when you say that some of his statistics are time consuming and that some decisions need to be made on the spot or rather quickly and one would require a lot of time to make those, I.E. poker. Also, after reading this book i noticed that their was a lot of repetition inside of the book and made the book less exciting for me
Although, your assertion is plausible, I do not think he intended it to be interpreted that way. I think he was simply informing the audience of how the study of statistics can apply to all fields. Especially if one becomes a master on the subject, which will ultimately help solve problems with the weather and poker.
What is significance of the author choosing to cast himself as a fox? And describing the people that are ignore new information (that conflict with their view on the world) as hedgehogs?
This is because of Silver’s self-image, and his contrasting view of others who refuse to accept conflicting information. Silver sees himself as a fox, a cutting edge predator among the common people, or hedgehogs. While this may seem arrogant, I believe he means this more as a statement that his information is on the cutting edge, and people using older statistical methods are clinging to a decaying medium.
The first thing that stood out to me from this analogy was the fact that Silver chose a fox and a hedgehog. A fox is often characterized as sly, cunning, and clever, while a hedgehog is often characterized as complacent, content, and simple. By choosing these two animals alone, Silver has made a huge statement about people that are characterized as foxes and people that are characterized as hedgehogs. Foxes are able to adapt to new information and data, incorporating it into their predictions in order to make accurate statements. Hedgehogs are content with their current data; they refuse new information or information that contradicts their predictions. I think Silver establishes credibility by choosing to cast himself as a fox. In casting himself as a fox, he is establishing that he is a predictor that accepts data that contradicts his previous beliefs and is always incorporating new information into his predictions. If he characterized himself as a hedgehog, he wouldn’t have credibility with his reader; who would read an entire book written by someone that refuses to be wrong and improve?
I realize that the fox and hedgehog metaphor was originally used by Leo Tolstoy, but Silver’s choice to develop this metaphor further is what I was referring to above.
Nate Silver’s comparison of people to either Foxes or Hedgehogs relate to how people view the world and their own theories. With Foxes, as he casts himself, they are more open to mew ideas and they keep looking rather than sticking to one concept. Also, Foxes can be described as more empirical. With Hedgehogs, however, they have one big theory that they base all of their ideas around, similar to Sigmund Freud. A big contrast between a Fox and a Hedgehog is that Hedgehogs display overconfidence, which in turn greatly affects their predictions.
Also, Silver’s choice of casting himself as a Fox does in fact establish his credibility because it shows that he is not biased and accepts new ideas. Similarly, it reveals his lenience and open-mindedness with new ideas.
Nate Silver chose to cast himself as a fox because a fox is thought of as smart, quick, and cunning. That is how Nate sees and thinks of himself. He called people who ignore new information hedgehogs because hedgehogs protect themselves from the outside world with their spikes. Just like people will ignore or protect themselves from new information they don’t want to know.