The Signal and the Noise

Thanks for kindly making some of your holiday purchases through an Amazon link on this blog. I plan on buying a new pair of awesome blogging boots
with the proceeds. I also plan on buying Nate Silver's new book: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't.  

Check out the review in the New Republic:

IN THE HISTORY OF election forecasting, 2012 was 1936 all over again, with the roles updated. In 1936, a trio of new forecasters—Elmo Roper, Archibald Crossley, and George Gallup—used statistical sampling methods and predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would win re-election, contrary to the best-known “straw poll” of the time, conducted by The Literary Digest. TheDigest mailed ballots to millions of automobile owners and telephone subscribers, groups that in the midst of the Depression drastically over-represented Republicans. The sheer number of ballots it received, the Digest assumed, would guarantee an accurate forecast. In fact, its straw poll turned out to overestimate the vote for Alfred Landon, the Republican candidate for president, by nineteen points. That the new statistical forecasters could make a more accurate prediction on the basis of a small sample of voters came as a revelation to the public. Ever since, the sample survey has been the dominant means of measuring public opinion.