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The Signal and the Noise
The Signal and the Noise
Sep 19, 2024 5:47 PM

Author:Nate Silver

The Signal and the Noise

The International Bestseller by 'The Galileo of number crunchers' (Independent)

Every time we choose a route to work, decide whether to go on a second date, or set aside money for a rainy day, we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the financial crisis to ecological disasters, we routinely fail to foresee hugely significant events, often at great cost to society. The rise of 'big data' has the potential to help us predict the future, yet much of it is misleading, useless or distracting.

In The Signal and the Noise, the New York Times political forecaster Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the results of every state in the 2012 US election, reveals how we can all develop better foresight in an uncertain world. From the stock market to the poker table, from earthquakes to the economy, he takes us on an enthralling insider's tour of the high-stakes world of forecasting, showing how we can all learn to detect the true signals amid a noise of data.

'Remarkable and rewarding' Matthew D'Ancona, Sunday Telegraph

'A lucid explanation of how to think probabilistically' Guardian

Reviews

Perceptive, warm and very funny

—— Sunday Telegraph

Highly amusing and entertaining

—— Derby Evening Telegraph

One of the year's most original and outstanding books...fascinating labyrinths of history and human experience, which he perceptively, intructively and absorbingly explores. This is a read to relish

—— Financial Times

Theodore Zeldin's all-embracing history of our feelings throughout the ages [is] brilliantly original and unsettling... His scope is dazzling... A seductive and unusually thought provoking book

—— Sunday Telegraph

Bubbling wit... Zeldin makes life exciting for the reader. It is like being on some careering fair-ground ride that whirls you from one limelit fragment of civilisation to the next at breakneck speed...gatecrashing all the cultures of the world

—— Spectator

It's the sort of book that will go on being famous long after we're all dead... If ever a volume deserved that overused ecomium "this book will change your life", it is this one

—— Oxford Today

A charming and free-ranging history of science

—— The Sunday Times

It's the clearest and most beautifully written introduction to science I've ever read. Again and again I found myself saying "Oh! So that's how genes work!" (or stars, or tectonic plates, or all the other things he explains). Explanations I thought I knew were clarified; things I never understood were made clear for the first time

—— Philip Pullman

The Magic of Reality provides a beautiful, accessible and wide ranging volume that addresses the questions that all of us have about the universe...written with the masterful and eloquently literate style of perhaps the best popular expositor of science, Richard Dawkins, and delightfully illustrated by Dave McKean. What more could anyone ask for?

—— Lawrence Krauss, author of Quantum Man, and A Universe from Nothing

This book may be exactly what's needed to increase science literacy for readers of all ages

—— Publishers Weekly

This book is primarily aimed at teenagers, but plenty of adults will get a kick out of it too...McKean's drawings bring the text to life brilliantly ... Dawkins writes convincingly about everything from chemistry to statistics

—— Independent on Sunday

Dawkins uses a simple, brilliant technique highly appealing to young and old

—— The Washington Post

Few scientists manage to reach a huge popular audience. Even among them Richard Dawkins is distinctive for the clarity and elegance of his prose. The Magic of Reality... will be appreciated by inquisitive children while illuminating much for the adult general reader.

—— The Times

At once funny, prosaic, sinister and wise, Blum's tale is a beautifully written account of the true human cost of all our remote connectivity

—— Bella Bathurst, author of The Lighthouse Stevensons

With infectious wonder, Andrew Blum introduces us to the Internet's geeky wizards and takes us on an amiably guided tour of the world they've created ... the Internet that Blum's beautifully lucid prose makes real turns out to be if anything a more marvelous place than the cloudy dreamland we'd imagined

—— Donovan Hohn, author of Moby Duck

An illuminating journey of discovery

—— Sunday Express

Total immersive reading

—— The Wharf

A wonderful idea ... a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking book

—— Scotsman

Fascinating, absorbing

—— Good Book Guide

A quick, absorbing read - a summer beach book with brains

—— Bloomberg

If you can stomach only one end-of-the world-as-we-know it story this summer, none is more audacious or interesting than Alan Weisman's The World Without Us

—— The Boston Globe

His is an extraordinary story laced with tragedy

—— Mail on Sunday

[Root's] life story, vividly related here, is crammed with incident and adventure. Curious, creative and fearless, he has diced with death on numerous occasions and been mauled several times in his efforts to capture the daily lives of everything from silver-back gorillas to leopards in the wild on film. A gripping account of a life well lived

—— Good Book Guide
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