How to Catch a Black Swan? Why Only Some Predictions Come True, and Even Then Rarely

Most predictions regarding the economy, politics, emergencies, and other fields fail due to an incorrect assessment of probabilities under conditions of uncertainty. Often, we mistakenly take more confident predictions as being more accurate, while excessive confidence leads to failure. Only by deepening our understanding of randomness and uncertainty can we make our predictions closer to the truth. Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of the FiveThirtyEight website, based on his innovative forecasting system for outcomes in sports and politics, shows how to extract the true signal from a mass of background data — informational "noise." Silver analyzes the most accurate predictions in a wide variety of fields: from natural disasters to pandemics, from the poker table to the stock market, from global warming to sports. He examines how the most successful forecasters think and what unites them. What is the reason for their success? Are they better equipped than others — or are they just lucky? What patterns do they reveal? And are their predictions really correct? Silver notes that the authors of the best forecasts are superbly skilled in probabilistic tools. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable and notice many small details that bring them closer to the truth. With a correct assessment of probabilities, they can separate the signal from the noise. Nate Silver's book, resonating with the ideas of Nassim Taleb, helps meet "black swans" with dignity and is equally significant for anyone dealing with big data and calculating scenarios of future events.