Quote

The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth.

Nate Silver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Nate Silver
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: January 13
Journalist
Mathematician
Poker Player
Statistician
East Lansing
Michigan
Nathaniel Read Silver
Nathaniel Read Nate Silver
Truth
Distracts
Signal
Signals
Marketing
Noise

More quotes by Nate Silver

Image
When human judgment and big data intersect there are some funny things that happen
Nate Silver
Image
Actually, one of the better indicators historically of how well the stock market will do is just a Gallup poll, when you ask Americans if you think it's a good time to invest in stocks, except it goes the opposite direction of what you would expect. When the markets going up, it in fact makes it more prone toward decline.
Nate Silver
Image
People don't have a good intuitive sense of how to weigh new information in light of what they already know. They tend to overrate it.
Nate Silver
Image
Every day, three times per second, we produce the equivalent of the amount of data that the Library of Congress has in it's entire print collection, right? But most of it is like cat videos on YouTube or thirteen-year-olds exchanging text messages about the next 'Twilight' movie.
Nate Silver
Image
A lot of things can't be modeled very well.
Nate Silver
Image
The Protestant Reformation had a lot to do with the printing press, where Martin Luther's theses were reproduced about 250,000 times. And so you had widespread dissemination of ideas that hadn't circulated in the mainstream before.
Nate Silver
Image
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.
Nate Silver
Image
Race is still the No. 1 determinant in every election.
Nate Silver
Image
We're living in a world where Google beats Gallup.
Nate Silver
Image
You get steely nerves playing poker.
Nate Silver
Image
Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.
Nate Silver
Image
I think there's space in the market for a half-dozen kind of polling analysts.
Nate Silver
Image
I was looking for something like baseball, where there's a lot of data and the competition was pretty low. That's when I discovered politics.
Nate Silver
Image
I have to make sure that I make good choices and that if I put my name on it, it's a high-quality endeavor and that I have time to be a human being.
Nate Silver
Image
I view my role now as providing more of a macro-level skepticism, rather than saying this poll is good or this poll is evil.
Nate Silver
Image
Basically, books were a luxury item before the printing press.
Nate Silver
Image
Accountability doesn't mean apologizing.
Nate Silver
Image
All I know is that I have way more stuff that I want to write about than I possibly have time to.
Nate Silver
Image
I don't think you should limit what you read.
Nate Silver
Image
If the state polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you can't acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20 swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal is to inform rather than entertain the public.
Nate Silver