Nate Silver Quotes
Expert estimates of probability are often off by factors of hundreds or
thousands. [...] I used to be annoyed when the margin of error was high in
a forecasting model that I might put together. Now I view it as perhaps the
single most important piece of information that a forecaster provides. When
we publish a forecast on FiveThirtyEight, I go to great lengths to document
the uncertainty attached to it, even if the uncertainty is sufficiently
large that the forecast won't make for punchy headlines.
Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't. Penguin Press, 2012.
He does not claim that a prediction may not coincidentally turn out to be accurate—just that the predictor has no certainty whatsoever and at best was guessing and at worse manipulating.
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician and writer who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics), basketball, and elections (see psephology). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight and a Special Correspondent for ABC News.
