Nate Silver Quotes

I am incredibly bad at predicting the future; I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies.

All models have faults - that doesn't mean you can't use them as tools for making decisions.

We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.

I'm a lousy predictor of the future.

Could we have prevented in 100% certainty? I don't think anything is that certain. However, we would have had a very, very good chance for preventing it.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

In the intelligence business you are almost never completely wrong or completely right.

Foreseeing the future is always difficult.

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

The entrepreneurial mind-set is that risk is the heightened probability that there is a big range of possible outcomes.

Statistics may be defined as "a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty.

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

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

If I do something, it's always 90% obvious and 10% unknown.

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

How do Ferrari know what I'm doing next year when I don't know what I'm doing next week?

The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.

Risk models are a substitute for historical knowledge, because they tend to work with just three years' worth of data. But three years is not a long time in financial history.

Public decision-making does not lend itself to certitude.

The real world is far too complex and unpredictable to make something like the idea of humanity controlling its own evolution or engineering itself - well, I wouldn't say impossible but it should be approached with a degree of caution.

Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.

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

The only safe thing is to take a chance.

Games are all about taking risks.

I think there's a difference between a gamble and a calculated risk.