Go to download electronic copy of book: $19.99
See book available for shipping from same merchant: $14.99
Check their physical store for same book: $27.99

After taking all this in, I did end up doing the ebook version of Nate Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise,” though largely because I wanted to start reading without waiting for it to be shipped.

Silver progresses through a series of topics building a case for improving predictions and models by largely being as honest as possible with the process.  He highlights the need for good input data and especially in expressing results with degrees of confidence.  As he argues, it may get more headlines to give an emphatic yes/no kind of pick, but everyone is better served if you honestly say there’s an 85 percent yes/15 percent no chance of whatever happening.

He focuses one chapter on economists’ forecasts for Gross Domestic Product, those periodic releases of data on how the economy is doing.  So many of the picks come out as just a number, like 3 percent growth next quarter.  But Silver says those picks tend to have what is basically a 3.2 percent margin of error, meaning a 3 percent target could in reality turn out to be 6.2 percent or -0.2 percent, which is a pretty significant difference.

To get the best use of a GDP forecast, Silver argues that perhaps we should be reporting them with margins of error just as we do with political polls.

“Danger lurks, in the economy and elsewhere,” he writes, “when we discourage forecasters from making a full and explicit account of the risks inherent in the world around us.”

The most fascinating chapter of the book for me is about weather forecasting.  It’s no secret that people love to make fun of the profession, but perhaps because of my personal relationship with some meteorologists, I find myself being more of a defender.  Silver points out that weather forecasts have gotten steadily better every year, and have dramatically improved in the past 10 or so.

But he brings up one thing that will truly make me see forecasts differently, and that’s how various outlets will talk to you about the chance of rain.  Silver says a National Weather Service forecast of 20 percent chance of rain really does play out that often, while the Weather Channel will say 20 when it actually only rains 5 percent of that time.

Why?

“In fact, this is deliberate and is something the Weather Channel is will to admit to,” Silver writes.  “It has to do with their economic incentives.  People notice one type of mistake — the failure to predict rain — more than another kind, false alarms.  If it rains when it isn’t supposed to, they curse the weatherman for ruining their picnic, whereas an unexpectedly sunny day is taken as a serendipitous bonus.”

Silver also talks about the challenges and risks of judging forecasts that may be what he calls “self-defeating.”  That is, a forecast that end up affecting itself and thus not coming true.

“The most effective flu prediction might not be one that fails to come to fruition because it motivates people toward more healthful choices.”

And yet, how often do we see people throw up a prediction about something like flu season and say “SEE! SEE HOW WRONG YOU WERE!”  More need to talk about ranges of outcomes and think about why things turn out the way they do.

Another chapter on his baseball model, called PECOTA, made me laugh and drop into a deep baseball-less depression.  Silver really became first known for developing PECOTA, and among other things he used it to project how minor league players would perform.  He says in the book that his model was optimistic about future stars like Ian Kinsler and Matt Kemp.

“But have you ever heard of Joel Guzman?  Donald Murphy?  Yusemiro Petit?  Unless you are a baseball junkie, probably not.  PECOTA liked those players as well.”

Yes, Nate, I HAVE HEARD OF YUSEMIRO PETIT.  Granted, this book came out two years ago, but just last month I sat freezing in Nationals Park as the San Francisco Giants outlasted my beloved Nats 2-1 in an 18-inning game that was the longest in MLB postseason history.

Petit pitched six innings in relief for the Giants that night, allowing only one hit and earning the win as the Giants grabbed a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

I guess I can’t hold Silver responsible for the emotional effects of his forecast coming true.  This is a great book for those interesting in modeling, data or just thinking about how we talk about the world around us.

If you obsessively check here for new posts you’re about to think I’m going to skip eating and breathing this weekend in favor of reading.  Somehow I haven’t done a book post since mid-September, and combined with the fact that I have actually been reading, there are four I need to talk about.

Here we’re just going to worry about the first — Junot Diaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.”

This is one of those books I’ve walked past or picked up in a bookstore roughly 2.8 billion times before I actually committed to reading it.

The story is a multi-generational tale from one family and multiple narrators.  Diaz does a really incredible job of differentiating their voices so that even with no labeling you would easily know who was talking.  Remember this when I get to the fourth book (the final in the Divergent series), which I think is equally as poor as “Oscar Wao” is good in this department.

For much of the story Oscar is the main focus.  He’s a nerdy, awkward kid who struggles to be “normal” in many social settings and yet outwardly maintains a sort of detached attitude about his results.  It’s as if in his failures he sees in retrospect he should not have expected success and adopts that as a memory instead of seeing that view as hindsight.

One of the other narrators, who at one point dates Oscar’s sister, Lola, describes one episode of Oscar’s charm:

“Oscar’s idea of a G was to talk about role-playing games!  How fucking crazy is that?  (My favorite was the day on the E bus when he informed some hot morena, If you were in my game I would give you an eighteen Charisma!)”

I most enjoyed being led along this story by Lola, who is a few years older than Oscar.  Diaz gives her a certain thoughtfulness that comes with having to grow up early and take care (in certain ways) of both her mother and brother.

She talks at one point about discovering her mother’s breast cancer, beginning that story with, “It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”

I think I would disagree with that slightly — I shy away from using that kind of absolute — but I think saying it’s rarely the changes we want that change everything is accurate.  Yes, there are a few cases in which a surprise is positively life changing, say a job offer out of the blue.  But most often it’s the negatives that blow up your world.

Lola isn’t on the same level of dorkdom as Oscar, but she’s studious and likes to read.  She describes part of her life in which she wanted to get away from all the responsibilities that had been thrown on her shoulders.

“All my favorite books from that period were about runaways.  “Watership Down,” “The Incredible Journey,” “My Side of the Mountain.”

This sentence made me wonder how many people reading this book are like me and have also read “Watership Down” and “My Side of the Mountain.”  We need a form of Google for this.

When I was a kid, my neighbors gave me “My Side of the Mountain” as a birthday gift.  It’s the kind of book that has a map in the front, the ones you study for a few minutes before getting to the text even though you know there’s no chance you’ll remember anything useful without learning the context.  The main character is living on his own in the woods (I think he sleeps inside a tree?) and has a pet falcon.  As a boy, that’s a pretty dope protagonist.

“Watership Down” was one of the required summer reading books for my 10th grade GT English class.  I thought it was going to be the most boring book in existence, but mainly because I didn’t know what the word “lapine” meant.  The reading list had a description of each title, and I read this one to my mom in a mock aristocratic tone, thinking that “lapine society” involved people with powdered wigs.  She let me finish, then informed me that lapine meant it was a story about rabbits.  It was fantastic.

Back to Oscar — I should never have put this book down in the bookstore.  It can be super depressing at times, but I think that makes you better appreciate the highs and the beauty elsewhere.  I also should have been less engrossed in the story and flagged more things.

I’ll close with this insight from Diaz, which I don’t think need any caveats:

“Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can’t exist without one.”