The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver | Book Club

Full Title: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't
Suggested by: Mark K.
Pages to read: 459
ISBN: 9780143125082 (Originally listed edition & Edition Eugene is using)

Eugene's review of the book (Blog Link, Click Here)

Community Guidelines (Meetup Link, Click Here)

All Upcoming event (Meetup Link, Click Here)

Forthcoming Similar Events:
1 - Fiction / Math - 09/13/2025 = The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams
2 - Decision Making - 09/27/2025 = The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley
3 - Decision Making - 10/11/2025 = The Sirens' Call: Attention Resource by Christopher L. Hayes
4 - Application of Math - 11/15/2025 = A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Solomon Bennett
5 - Application of Math - 11/29/2025 = Weapons of Math Destruction: Big Data by Cathy O'Neill

Contribute:
The club has costs. If you appreciated the event, support the club. Contribute via:

1. Zelle, PayPal, or Venmo. Contribute to eugenefrominquiry@gmail.com.
2. GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/adabd41c

While reading the book, consider the below questions:
•What is the raison d’etre of the book? For what purpose did the author write the book? Why do people read this book?
•What are some limitations of the book?
•To whom would you suggest this book?
•Are statisticians able to predict outcomes?
•Did Nate Silver predict political outcomes?
•How did the printing press change the value of information?
•What do people want to hear?
•Who speaks for numbers?
•What is the quality of medical hypotheses?
•What is information overload?
•What is the rate of change for the noise and the signal?
•What are common causes of prediction failures?
•What is the difference between risk and uncertainty?
•What is the difference between a good and bad forecast?
•What is the difference between a prediction and a forecast?
•What do rating agencies do?
•What did the rating agencies predict?
•What does it mean to be out of sample?
•How does confidence effect predictions?
•Who are hedgehogs and foxes?
•Who is more likely to appear on major media explaining their views?
•What is the value of news?
•What makes for a valuable baseball player?
•What happened to weather forecasts?
•What is Laplace’s Demon?
•What is the value of a computer?
•What is chaos theory?
•What happens when people do not trust their sources of information?
•Can earthquakes be predicted?
•What is overfitting?
•hat is the value of economic forecasts?
•Can data be ignored?
•Can the spread of diseases be predicted?
•What is a self-fulfilling prediction?
•What is the value of a model?
•How to gamble on sports?
•What is the purpose of a Bayesian analysis?
•What is the frequentist approach?
•How did chess change?
•What is the Mechanical Turk?
•How to play poker?
•Can the stock market be predicted?
•What are the forms of an efficient-market?
•How does herding effect the quality of forecasts?
•What do meteorologist think about climate change?
•What is the use of skepticism?
•Could 9/11 be predicted?
•Could the attack on Pearl Harbor be predicted?

Your questions are important and will take priority. If you have questions about the book's content or related ideas, either let me know what your questions are or raise them during the discussion.