Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise

Gibson's novels deal extensively with the science of prediction, which he depicts as a kind of occult phenomenon or 6th sense (cf Laney with his uncanny nodal perception, or the Coolhunter Cayce). As usual, in exploring this theme, Gibson is masterfully extrapolating from current issues, such as the rise of and obsession with Big Data. My reading of this book, then, was driven by curiosity of the actual state of prediction today, especially as compared to its potential as envisioned by Gibson. Sounds like we have a ways to go! It was a very fast and enjoyable read, written in a fluent and conversational style. Recommend!

Dad's review here.

The Signal and the Noise

This very fascinating book by Nate Silver, of 538.com and NY Times fame, was recommended by Jesse and a geneticist friend, Anil Menon - and it's a winner!  The book is all about predictions - in this era of "big data", one might think that we would be able to make more and more accurate predictions, yet Silver shows that this is not the case.  He looks closely at several fields in which predictions are crucial - weather, earthquakes, climate change and others - and shows that predictions have become more accurate in some of these (weather), but not others (climate change and earthquakes) - and discusses why this is so.  The book sounds very wonky - Bayesian statistics are discussed at some length - but it is exceptionally readable and enjoyable.   Silver's writing seems like speech - it probably was dictated - and he has a whimsical sense of humor that catches you by surprise - he's laugh out loud funny.  He discusses Isaiah Berlin and hedgehogs and foxes (see Berlin's essay) to describe effective predictors (foxes) versus ineffective predictors (hedgehogs).  Really absorbing and informative.  Very highly recommended.  I plan to re-read it soon!

Numbers Rule Your World

I kind of found this book by accident while searching for something else at the library, but I figured, "Hey, why not try it?"

Sadly, I wasn't impressed with the book. Some moments really stood out, but most of the "aha" moments that are supposed to make a book like this shine were more of, "huh? um... isn't that obvious?" moments.

The organization of the book, which divided it into 5 chapters, with two stories per chapter that each had a core lesson in statistics, was a good idea, but was poorly executed so that I never fully understood the connections between the stories.

Overall, I felt the book was too simplistic to engage, and so I would not recommend it to close friends or family.