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.

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.