This month’s selection is big, thick, and heavy. Called The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, it’s loaded with all kinds of stuff to keep you up at night… even well after you put down this page-turner and turn off the light. Got a big ol’ appetite for understanding a global economic meltdown, chaos theory, Texas hold ’em, and why your local weather forecaster gets “it” wrong so often? Look no further than this book subtitled “Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t.” Silver is young and brilliant and has built a machine/algorithm/whachamacallit that pegs so much of what might just confound you on a day-to-day basis. Holding it in the bookstore (the what?), flipping through its 450+ pages, one (okay, me… maybe not you) pauses to wonder if such a book can be comfortably consumed in a reasonable amount of time. It can be. And there are all kinds of graphs. And charts. Take all that out, it’s like reading a whitepaper over a cup of coffee.
Should we talk about the weather? If you’re looking to go for a run, have a picnic, or even just avoid a bad hair day, you’ll likely tune in to that day’s weather forecast. But let’s say you’re planning something for the following week. According to the book, those seven- and eight-day forecasts are pretty worthless. “It would be one thing if… the computer models demonstrated essentially zero skill,” writes Silver. “But instead, they actually display negative skill.” Translation: just Google long-term weather averages to get a more reliable sense of what you should expect a week out. And we never see a 50% chance of rain predicted because forecasters fear it appears wishy-washy, so they round up or down by 10 points. And let’s not get started on what a 20% chance of rain means. (It likely means 5%, but The Weather Channel prefers to have us pleasantly surprised – ostensibly pleased with them – when it actually doesn’t rain. It’s marketing. It’s smoke. And they admit as much.) Regardless, the best of the weather-related material centers on the time The Weather Channel had the temerity to change the graphical depiction of rain from green to blue, causing panic among much of its faithful audience, with one viewer writing to ask, “What madness is this?” Okay…
Should we talk about the government? The Signal and the Noise takes the reader deep into economic forecasts, consumer confidence, controlling the spread of disease, etc. In his research, Silver also had direct access to Donald Rumsfeld and there is quite a bit here about terrorism and how the former Defense Secretary views “unknown unknowns.” With all the noise your government hears, it’s damned difficult to find the true signal, especially if you lack of imagination in your search for trouble (see the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions). Forget about terror plots being needles in haystacks; here it says it’s more like “finding one particular needle in a pile full of needle parts.” Yikes. So the book isn’t terribly uplifting. That’s okay, though. You can at least learn a new poker strategy or two!