260 Quotes by Nate Silver

The promise that attracted me to move is the idea that you can come to New York and be surrounded by the people who are the best at what they do in many different fields. On that front, I think it delivers. Working your way around the city you really do run into a disproportionate number of really interesting people. That’s almost what you pay your taxes for, even if you think it’s a little crazy to pay that much to live here.

If political scientists couldn’t predict the downfall of the Soviet Union—perhaps the most important event in the latter half of the twentieth century—then what exactly were they good for?

As the statistician George E. P. Box wrote, "All models are wrong, but some models are useful." What he meant by that is that all models are simplifications of the universe, as they must necessarily be. As another mathematician said, "The best model of a cat is a cat."...The key is in remembering that a model is a tool to help us understand the complexities of the universe, and never a substitute for the universe itself.

Most of you will have heard the maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other does not mean that one is responsible for the other. For instance, ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don't light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Haagan-Dazs.

The Protestant Reformation had a lot to do with the printing press, where Martin Luther's theses were reproduced about 250,000 times, and so you had widespread dissemination of ideas that hadn't circulated in the mainstream before.

When you get into statistical analysis, you don't really expect to achieve fame. Or to become an Internet meme. Or be parodied by 'The Onion' - or be the subject of a cartoon in 'The New Yorker.' I guess I'm kind of an outlier there.

First of all, I think it's odd that people who cover politics wouldn't have any political views.

A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.

I have the same friends and the same bad habits.