Money and Finance
- Nate Silver On The Launch Of Espn’s New Fivethirtyeight, Burritos, And Being A Fox
Link to article: Nate Silver on the Launch of ESPN’s New FiveThirtyEight, Burritos, and Being a FoxStats superstar Nate Silver hates the term “data-driven.” He also hates the work of just about every popular columnist at all of the major newspapers,...
- Mish Buys A Basket Of Miners
Gold Stock Comments NEM - Newmont Mining: My best value play and weighted accordingly. Price/book is a mere 1.19 and I have no reason to believe book value is overstated. Trailing PE is 10.04 and the dividend yield is 4.10%. What's not to like?...
- Nate Silver And The Lessons Of 2012
Via The Big Picture. Link to: Nate Silver and the Lessons of 2012 …………….. Related book: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't Related link: Nate Silver on Charlie Rose (Oct. 30th) ...
- All Hail The Generalist - By Vikram Mansharamani
Found via @farnamstreet. We have become a society of specialists. Business thinkers point to "domain expertise" as an enduring source of advantage in today's competitive environment. The logic is straightforward: learn more about your function, acquire...
- Hedgehogs And Foxes
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” -Archilochos In the book Boombustology (which I’d put in my list of ‘Top 10 Most Important Books on Investing’), Vikram Mansharamani states that: The basic underlying logic of...
Money and Finance
Only fools claim to know the future – by John Kay
At this season it is customary to look back on the achievements of the year that is past and to consider what may unfold in the year to come. Nate Silver, the young statistician who became an unexpected hero of 2012, is relevant to both exercises.
Many experts thought the American election too close to call but Mr Silver, though reviled by the Republicans, insisted that Barack Obama was likely to be comfortably re-elected. His prediction received attention because his forecasts of results four years earlier had proved very accurate. When Mr Silver was again proved right, his publisher cashed in and his book on prediction, The Signal and the Noise, became a bestseller.
There is no crystal ball behind Mr Silver’s success: just diligent work, obtaining disaggregated polling data, and assembling them with a sceptical mind that is well-informed about qualitative as well as quantitative factors relevant to the results. However, Mr Silver’s care, and his reliability, put popular pundits to shame. He exemplifies – and in his book reiterates – the distinction between hedgehog and fox made by the political scientist Philip Tetlock (following Isaiah Berlin, following Tolstoy, following Erasmus, following Archilochus). The hedgehog knows one big thing, the fox many little things. The hedgehog attracts public attention, but the fox is better at forecasting.
- Nate Silver On The Launch Of Espn’s New Fivethirtyeight, Burritos, And Being A Fox
Link to article: Nate Silver on the Launch of ESPN’s New FiveThirtyEight, Burritos, and Being a FoxStats superstar Nate Silver hates the term “data-driven.” He also hates the work of just about every popular columnist at all of the major newspapers,...
- Mish Buys A Basket Of Miners
Gold Stock Comments NEM - Newmont Mining: My best value play and weighted accordingly. Price/book is a mere 1.19 and I have no reason to believe book value is overstated. Trailing PE is 10.04 and the dividend yield is 4.10%. What's not to like?...
- Nate Silver And The Lessons Of 2012
Via The Big Picture. Link to: Nate Silver and the Lessons of 2012 …………….. Related book: The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't Related link: Nate Silver on Charlie Rose (Oct. 30th) ...
- All Hail The Generalist - By Vikram Mansharamani
Found via @farnamstreet. We have become a society of specialists. Business thinkers point to "domain expertise" as an enduring source of advantage in today's competitive environment. The logic is straightforward: learn more about your function, acquire...
- Hedgehogs And Foxes
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” -Archilochos In the book Boombustology (which I’d put in my list of ‘Top 10 Most Important Books on Investing’), Vikram Mansharamani states that: The basic underlying logic of...