Nate Silver Quotes
Precise forecasts masquerade as accurate ones.
Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't. Penguin Press, 2012.
There is a great tendency in politics and government operations to get extremely precise numbers because political opponents will always attack all numbers that do not support their positions. The result is that typically, so much time and money goes into trying to get precision, that by the time the numbers are good enough the opportunity to make the right policy decision will have passed. Much information that bears on an issue is never used because it is not precise enough while the precise information is not particularly relevant. See {619763} for a similar related quote.
Despite this reality, most politicians, if they have the resources and high enough position, surround themselves with experts to advise them and then listen to them to take positions in campaigns or advise them on policy making if they are in office.
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician and writer who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics), basketball, and elections (see psephology). He is the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight and a Special Correspondent for ABC News.
