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Nate Silvers talk: A summary of his points

Nate Silver just finished his talk, and he’s currently taking questions via the twitter hashtag #jsm2013.  Here is a summary of the points of Nate Silver’s talk (thanks to Miles Ott (@Miles_Ott) for most of these):

1. Stats aren’t just numbers

2. Data requires context

3. Correlation does not equal causation

4. Mean is tops 

5. Human intuition often errs with numbers

6. Make forecasts including uncertainty

7. Know thy priors

8. The word complex isn’t always a compliment

9. Insiderism in an enemy of scientific objectivity

10. Making predictions improves accountability, though apparently there’s no betting in the newsroom

Cheers.

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3 responses to “Nate Silvers talk: A summary of his points”

  1. JSM 2013 – Day 2 | Citizen-Statistician

    […] Someone else already posted a list of his talking points, so instead of listing them here again, I’ll just link to that post. The Q&A was just as interesting as the talk itself, below are a few notes I jotted […]

    Reply
  2. An empirical look at PEDs in baseball | Stats in the Wild Avatar
    An empirical look at PEDs in baseball | Stats in the Wild

    […] acids. We can’t know that until we have more data. Correlation doesn’t mean causation (Nate Silver’s third point from his talk at JSM).  This study just provides a base that further research can explore and […]

    Reply
  3. Want to Be the Next Nate Silver? That’ll Cost You $60,000 | Bioscience + Innovation Avatar
    Want to Be the Next Nate Silver? That’ll Cost You $60,000 | Bioscience + Innovation

    […] Nate Silvers talk: A summary of his points (statsinthewild.com) […]

    Reply

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