260 Quotes by Nate Silver

If you aren’t taking a representative sample, you won’t get a representative snapshot.

Most of it is just noise, and the noise is increasing faster than the signal. There are so many hypotheses to test, so many data sets to mine – but a relatively constant amount of objective truth.

If today we feel a sense of impermanence because things are changing so rapidly, impermanence was a far more literal concern for the generations before us.

I prefer more to kind of show people different things than tell them ‘oh, here’s what you should believe’ and, over time, you can build up a rapport with your audience.

Never before in human history have so many predictions been made so quickly and for such high stakes.

We are undoubtedly living with many delusions that we do not even realize.

People still don’t appreciate how ephemeral success is.

Shakespeare’s plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.

That meant that for every dollar that someone was willing to put in a mortgage, Wall Street was making almost $50 worth of bets on the side.