Coarse Guides — The Signal and the Noise
A Rough Take on Nate Silver’s Best Seller
What to know?
Published: September 2012 (paperback 2015)
Size: 454 pages of direct content organized into 13 Chapters
Popularity: New York Times Best Seller
The Theme: Nate’s book focuses on forecasting and probability. It draws heavily on Bayesian statistics. Examples are provided in areas like baseball, politics, and poker — expertise of the author. Further examples are provided in earthquake prediction, climate change, and terrorism — arguably not.
The Author: Nate Silver is best known for his site FiveThirtyEight. A site which combines his love of statistics with many of the subjects he has worked in through his career. Nate has a background in accounting, baseball, poker, and politics. His book leverages this diversity to its fullest.
Who should read it?
If you want to be an analyst, you should read this book. If you think you are a forecaster, you HAVE to read this book. If you have a passing interest in sports, gambling, politics, or statistics — you may enjoy it, too.
Why should you read it?
This book has a lot to offer. From Bayes to Power Laws, it provides real-world examples and explanations of statistical techniques and outcomes. The book delves deep while remaining very conversational. This is not a white paper.
Read it to gain wisdom and perspective. Read it because it is thought-provoking. Read it to learn how statistics applies across disciplines and fields of research.
Caveats, provisos, and disclaimers
This book tries hard to be very relevant. Too hard. Nate chooses to include a few chapters more for their real-world interest than because he has a statistics or analysis based insight to add. No chapter is devoid of value, but a few are thin.
In Our Opinion: The chapter on statistics in the battle verse terrorism has a great comparison component with earthquake prediction but goes on too long. The chapter on climate change starts with some strong wisdom but quickly supplants science and fact with politics and opinion. But we encourage you to inform your own-
Coarse Guides are an article format created by Corsair’s Institute to provide a rough understanding of content provided by outstanding authors in the areas of professional development, analytics, and business.
