260 Quotes by Nate Silver

Most statistical models are built on the notion that there are independent variables and dependent variables, inputs and outputs, and they can be kept pretty much separate from one another.39 When it comes to the economy, they are all lumped together in one hot mess.

So we should have some sympathy for economic forecasters.50 It’s hard enough to know where the economy is going. But it’s much, much harder if you don’t know where it is to begin with.

Caesar recognized the omens, but he didn’t believe they applied to him.

If you’re keeping yourself in the bubble and only looking at your own data or only watching the TV that fits your agenda then it gets boring.

Scientific progress is harder to measure than economic progress.32 But one mark of it is the number of patents produced, especially relative to the investment in research and development. If it has become cheaper to produce a new invention, this suggests that we are using our information wisely and are forging it into knowledge.

I guess I don’t like the people in politics very much, to be blunt.

What isn’t acceptable under Bayes’s theorem is to pretend that you don’t have any prior beliefs. You should work to reduce your biases, but to say you have none is a sign that you have many. To state your beliefs up front – to say “Here’s where I’m coming from”12 – is a way to operate in good faith and to recognize that you perceive reality through a subjective filter.

Like a baseball umpire, an intelligence analyst risks being blamed when something goes wrong but receives little notice when she does her job well.

The most calamitous failures of prediction usually have a lot in common. We focus on those signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is. We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure, even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being. We make approximations and assumptions about the world that are much cruder than we realize. We abhor uncertainty, even when it is an irreducible part of the problem we are trying to solve.