Monday, December 31, 2012

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't


The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't is great product from amazon. Find out more about The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't reviews from the real buyers. Only recommended shopping from here at amazon, they are largest shopping center in the world, arrived on the date promised and the buying process is secure guarantee. Would highly recommend to buy The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't to others.
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The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't

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"Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century."
—Rachel Maddow, author of Drift


Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. The New York Times now publishes FiveThirtyEight.com, where Silver is one of the nation’s most influential political forecasters.

Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.

In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science.

Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.

With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read.

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2012: People love statistics. Statistics, however, do not always love them back. The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver's brilliant and elegant tour of the modern science-slash-art of forecasting, shows what happens when Big Data meets human nature. Baseball, weather forecasting, earthquake prediction, economics, and polling: In all of these areas, Silver finds predictions gone bad thanks to biases, vested interests, and overconfidence. But he also shows where sophisticated forecasters have gotten it right (and occasionally been ignored to boot). In today's metrics-saturated world, Silver's book is a timely and readable reminder that statistics are only as good as the people who wield them. --Darryl Campbell




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    387 of 403 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Much-needed insight to understand and improve predictive science, September 27, 2012
    By 
    Sitting in Seattle (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
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    This review is from: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don't (Hardcover)
    This is the best general-readership book on applied statistics that I've read. Short review: if you're interested in science, economics, or prediction: read it. It's full of interesting cases, builds intuition, and is a readable example of Bayesian thinking.

    Longer review: I'm an applied business researcher and that means my job is to deliver quality forecasts: to make them, persuade people of them, and live by the results they bring. Silver's new book offers a wealth of insight for many different audiences. It will help you to develop intuition for the kinds of predictions that are possible, that are not so possible, where they may go wrong, and how to avoid some common pitfalls.

    The core concept is this: prediction is a vital part of science, of business, of politics, of pretty much everything we do. But we're not very good at it, and fall prey to cognitive biases and other systemic problems such as information overload that make things worse. However, we are... Read more
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    86 of 93 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Lively statistics, November 7, 2012
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    This review is from: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don't (Hardcover)
    This book explains the unerring accuracy for Nate SIlver's election predictions using Bayesian statistics. The BEST part of the book for me was that I finally understand Bayes' analysis. I used quite a few sophisticated statistical tools in my work (retired as reliability physics expert for semiconductor devices, aka chips), but I was never able to grasp Bayes Theorem until now. Wikipedia's "tutorial" was far too complicated even for a PhD, but Nate provided a simple version that a layman can understand ... and he did it using a hilarious example (look for "cheating"). In fact, I am so impressed with Bayes' analysis that I am thinking about writing a corollary to my two best technical papers grafting a Bayesian view.
    Returning to the election prediction issue, consider that each poll of 1000 people has a sampling error of +-5%, easily derived from Poisson statistics. However, when one pools the results from say 25 polls (and removes bias), the sample size is increased by... Read more
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    42 of 43 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, and here are some takeaways, November 11, 2012
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    This review is from: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail � but Some Don't (Hardcover)
    Excellent book!!! People looking for a "how to predict" silver bullet will (like some reviewers here) be disappointed, mainly because Silver is too honest to pretend that such a thing exists. The anecdotes and exposition are fantastic, and I wish we could make this book required reading for, say, everyone in the country.

    During election season, everyone with a newspaper column or TV show feels entitled to make (transparently partisan) predictions about the consequences of each candidate's election to unemployment/crime/abortion/etc. This kind of pundit chatter, as Silver notes, tends to be insanely inaccurate. But there are also some amazing success stories in the prediction business. I list some chapter-by-chapter takeaways below (though there's obviously a lot depth more to the book than I can fit into a list like this):

    1. People have puzzled over prediction and uncertainty for centuries.

    2. TV pundits make terrible predictions, no better than... Read more
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    Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power


    Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power is great product from amazon. Find out more about Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power reviews from the real buyers. Only recommended shopping from here at amazon, they are largest shopping center in the world, arrived on the date promised and the buying process is secure guarantee. Would highly recommend to buy Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power to others.
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    List Price : $35.00 Price : $15.49
    Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

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    In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
     
    Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books, science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America. Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history.
     
    The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion.
     
    The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world.

    Advance praise for Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
     
    “Jon Meacham resolves the bundle of contradictions that was Thomas Jefferson by probing his love of progress and thirst for power. This is a thrilling and affecting portrait of our first philosopher-politician.”—Stacy Schiff
     
    “This terrific book allows us to see the political genius of Thomas Jefferson better than we have ever seen it before. In these endlessly fascinating pages, Jefferson emerges with such vitality that it seems as if he might still be alive today.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin

    Amazon.com Review

    Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2012: As multifaceted a character as has ever been seen in American history (not to mention politics), Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the ideal leader for the young nation still struggling with external threats and its own identity: a to-the-core individualist and visionary who both embodied and reconciled the contradictions of individualism and a shared nationality. It’s no mean feat to render the life and times of such a figure (much less make it compulsively readable), but as with his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Andrew Jackson (American Lion), Jon Meacham’s Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power vividly illustrates the world and impact of our third president, deftly weaving the threads of Jefferson’s personality into a complete portrait of a singularly complex politician and thinker--a philosopher president. --Jon Foro




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      Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power Reviews


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      374 of 400 people found the following review helpful
      5.0 out of 5 stars A New Thomas Jefferson?, September 30, 2012
      By 
      James Hiller (Beaverton, OR) - See all my reviews
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      This review is from: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (Hardcover)
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      I've read a couple books on Thomas Jefferson in the past. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History to name a couple. Up until this newest book by Jon Meacham, I though that the essential character of Jefferson was essentially unknowable, a man of contradictions and hiddenness. Yet, Meacham manages, in his large but fascinating and quick read, to illuminate Jefferson through a new pair of eyes: that of his leadership. In doing so, we meet a new Jefferson, sometimes wily, always intelligent, always forward thinking.

      Jon Meacham wrote one of my favorite books,... Read more
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      113 of 124 people found the following review helpful
      4.0 out of 5 stars The art of soft power, October 12, 2012
      This review is from: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (Hardcover)
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      I'll admit to being a Jefferson fan. His vision is what led me to UVa, and his depth and breadth of knowledge and experience still astounds me. Truly a renaissance man who seemed to master most of what he attempted - languages, science, music, politics, and a man of stark contradictions. A man who owned slaves and yet campaigned to free them. A man who enjoyed political power but despised face to face confrontations. This book captures this man, and I think does an excellent job developing a focal point to use to understand Jefferson, his contributions and his flaws.

      Meacham uses one "prism" to evaluate Jefferson's life - the acquisition and use of power to achieve Jefferson's vision and aims. While this is nominally a biography, the depth of the book lies in examining how and when Jefferson acquired and used power to achieve his aims. While I had hoped to read more about the University of Virginia, I knew the book wouldn't spend much time on it, and it didn't. The... Read more
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      195 of 219 people found the following review helpful
      3.0 out of 5 stars A Simpler, Sometimes Simplistic, View of Jefferson the Man and Statesman, October 26, 2012
      By 
      dcreader (Washington DC area) - See all my reviews
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      This review is from: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (Hardcover)
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      Throughout our history Presidents as politically diverse as Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Kennedy and Reagan have enthusiastically embraced the legacy of their predecessor, Thomas Jefferson. Recent scholarship on the Founding generation, however, has unfairly diminished Jefferson in Jon Meacham's view. Biographies of Washington, Adams and Hamilton have all tended to reduce Jefferson to the role of an intriguer lurking in the background, a foil for Hamilton and Adams in particular. In Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Meacham reclaims Jefferson's prominence in setting America on her course, asserting that most of the Presidents who served between 1800 and 1840 were Jeffersonians, and holds Jefferson up as a role model for today's politicians struggling to reconcile political idealism with the realism needed to traverse the rough waters of democratic politics.

      The Art of Power is a very well written narrative and moves at a fast paced with chapters generally ranging from 10-15... Read more
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      Sunday, December 30, 2012

      National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation [Blu-ray]


      National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation [Blu-ray] is great product from amazon. Find out more about National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation [Blu-ray] reviews from the real buyers. Only recommended shopping from here at amazon, they are largest shopping center in the world, arrived on the date promised and the buying process is secure guarantee. Would highly recommend to buy National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation [Blu-ray] to others.
      Always Satisfied purchased anything from Amazon.com , Great Price, Great Service, Great Products!
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      Rating: 4.6

      List Price : $19.98 Price : $9.99
      National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation [Blu-ray]

      Product Description

      Make merry as Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid and an ensemble of comedy favorites strive to gift-wrap the "perfect Christmas" for the Griswold family. The most successful of the three vacations. Year: 1989 Director: Jeremiah S. Chechik Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid,

      Amazon.com

      You know exactly what you're getting in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation: another goofball, slapstick comedy of chaos and catastrophe with Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and family. This time, there's no traveling involved: Clark and Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) prepare for a nice Christmas with the kids (played by none other than Juliette Lewis and Roseanne star Johnny Galecki), when their home is invaded by backwoods cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) and his brood, along with assorted other crazy and/or stuffy relatives. Complications, of course, are inevitable. The film is preceded by National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) and National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985) and followed by National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation (1997). Directed by Jeremiah Chechik, who went on to do Benny & Joon and the Sharon Stone remake of Diabolique. --Jim Emerson


      • Blu-ray
      • Blue BD Case
      • Dolby Surround Stereo - English Mono 1.0 - French
      • Commentary by Randy Quaid Bevery D'Angelo Johnny Galeckl Miriam Flynn Jeremiah Chechik and Producer Natty Simmons Theatrical Trailer


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      110 of 117 people found the following review helpful
      5.0 out of 5 stars It's Christmas, and We're All in Misery . . . ., December 30, 2000
      With apologies to Jimmy Stewart and Ralphie Parker, this is my favorite Christmas movie of all time. If you are reading this because you have never seen "Christmas Vacation", stop right now and go to the video store and rent it. Then come back here and order your own copy because you'll want to watch it over and over again each holiday season.

      The undisputed gem of the National Lampoon 'Vacation' series, the plot can be summed up very simply: idealistic family man Clark Griswold wants to host the perfect old-fashioned fun family Christmas. As all of us idealistic family men have discovered, there is no such thing as a perfect holiday, and that just about sums it up. The appeal of this film is that we can all relate to the disasters that holidays can become, regardless of how well-meaning we are and how hard we work to achieve them.

      The cast is terrific. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo (Ellen) are back as the Griswolds, with Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki... Read more

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      82 of 95 people found the following review helpful
      5.0 out of 5 stars At Long Last!!!!!!!!!!, July 23, 2003
      By 
      Andy Radke (Guelph, Ontario CANADA) - See all my reviews
      Finally, after all this time, Warner Brothers have come to their senses. On October 7th, we will be treated to a heftly helping of one of the greatest Christmas films to ever grace the silver screen............in WIDESCREEN.

      I was extremely disappointed with the previous DVD release of this film which contained a pan & scan presentation and nothing more than a theatrical trailer in the extras department.

      What we have here is a special edition of this great movie, which will contain audio commentary from both Beverly D'Angelo and Chevy Chase, a "making of" featurette, as well as other stocking stuffers which have yet to be disclosed at this present time.

      Being a huge fan of this movie, I honestly can't wait for this release. "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" has become a holiday tradition in my home, and to be able to see it the way it was intended to be seen is truly a treat for me.

      Aside from the features of the disk, the film itself is the true gift. One of the... Read more

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      82 of 104 people found the following review helpful
      5.0 out of 5 stars The best of the Vacation series, September 7, 2004
      By 
      Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
      (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   
      You really take your life in your hands every time you sit down with a Chevy Chase film. Let's face reality here: Chevy Chase is responsible for several of the worst movies ever made. Does it take more than a few minutes of viewing to see the mind numbing folly of "Nothing But Trouble," "The Three Amigos," and "Spies Like Us"? Chase has sure had his truly embarrassing moments on the big screen. What redeems the guy, at least in my eyes, are several films that play up to the comedian's smart alecky, deadpan delivery. "Fletch," of course, is the gold standard of Chevy Chase films, but other movies showcase his talents just as well. I always thought "Deal of the Century" a classic Chase film, as well as "Foul Play" (although the latter was more of an ensemble picture). But we need look no further than the four National Lampoon Vacation films to truly judge the merits of this comedian turned actor. Actually, I should say three Vacation films since the second installment, where the... Read more
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