Nate Silver Quotes

If we have as a clear certainty with which to plan, total uncertainty, then that would be helpful.

I'm always trying to calculate the mathematical probability of certain outcomes.

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.

But to us, probability is the very guide of life.

Whatever way uncertainty is approached, probability is the only sound way to think about it.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty.

While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.

Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability.

One cannot plan for the unexpected.

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgements of probabilities, and not on certainties.

Physics tells us observations can't be predicted absolutely. Rather, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability.

You can build a statistical model and that's all well and good, but if you're dealing with a new type of financial instrument, for example, or a new type of situation - then the choices you're making are pretty arbitrary in a lot of respects.

Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity: they don't know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be - there is the law of unanticipated consequences.

It is such a complex matter we live within, it is impossible to track logic and decision making really, so therefore each choice can actually only be seen as coincidence.

Life is a school of probability

Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.

All market response results from a reduction of uncertainty.

An old friend of mine, an economist by trade, once explained to me that the statistical definition of 'dilemma' is 49.9% in favor and 50.1% against. If the gap is greater, there is no dilemma, because the answer is clear.

The success of a particular policy prescription is always a gamble.

You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.

Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.

There's no way to know what's going to happen.

Truly, that reason upon which we plume ourselves, though it may answer for little things, yet for great decisions is hardly surer than a toss up.

The grand assertion is that you must see the world through probability and that probability is the only guide you need.

Decisions are always made with insufficient information. If you really knew what was going on, the decision would make itself.