Nate Silver Quotes

All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.

I'm not too worried about that. I am a big believer in modeling.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

A great many decisions just can’t be made with confidence because the data just doesn’t exist …. [however] just because we don’t have the information doesn’t mean that we can’t get it.

All through my life, when faced with a difficult decision, I always ask myself - where can I learn more. Make the choice to learn.

If the modern leader doesn't know the facts, he is in grave trouble, but rarely do the facts provide unqualified guidance.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.

Sometimes one must make extended conclusions from limited data.

Passion provides purpose, but data drives decisions.

Whether baseball or football, we're tasked in front offices with making decisions under uncertainty. How do you corral that uncertainty in a way to make more consistently better decisions? That's very similar.

At TechStars, I have the privilege of working with hundreds of the best and brightest start-up mentors on the planet. We coach our mentors to take a Socratic approach and to provide data rather than decisions.

Approximating involves making a series of educated guesses systematically by partitioning the problem into manageable chunks, identifying assumptions, and then using your general knowledge of the world to fill in the blanks.

I need something, Wax. A place to look. You always did the thinking.” “Yes, having a brain helps with that, surprisingly.

There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient, and a random one. In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing.

It is difficult finding intelligence that is actionable in a lot of these places, but we have to keep trying.

Scientific data are not taken for museum purposes; they are taken as a basis for doing something. If nothing is to be done with the data, then there is no use in collecting any. The ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. The step intermediate between the collection of data and the action is prediction.

If you have all the research, all the ground rules, all the directives, all the data - it doesn't mean the ad is written. Then you've got to close the door and write something - that is the moment of truth which we all try to postpone as long as possible.

Why, then, do you think the white player might have done it?" Reynie considered. He imagined himself moving out his knight only to bring it right back to where it started. Why would he ever do such a thing? At last he said,"Perhaps because he doubted himself.

Migration has been politicized before it has been analyzed.

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.

If you are ever uncomfortable or are unsure of something, you attribute it.

About 85 per cent of my "thinking" time was spent getting into a position to think, to make a decision, to learn something I needed to know. Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it. Hours went into the plotting of graphs... When the graphs were finished, the relations were obvious at once, but the plotting had to be done in order to make them so.

When we cannot use the compass of mathematics or the torch of experience...it is certain we cannot take a single step forward.

Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping