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Analysis of successful forecasting

The City of Knoxville’s Deputy to the Mayor and Chief Policy Officer Dr. William Lyons discusses the book The signal and the noise : why so many predictions fail-- but some don't by Nate Silver. (Recorded January 16, 2013)

Silver is the statistician behind The New York Times' FiveThirtyEight election blog. In his book, Silver examines successful forecasters on the topics of hurricanes, baseball, poker, pro basketball and Capitol Hill.

"Nate Silver is a master of highlighting and simplifying the assumptions that enable our ability to forecast physical, social, political outcomes," says Dr. Lyons. "In this insightful book he notes the importance of human judgment as a valuable supplement to the use of probability-based models to understand and explain some of the most important recent events.”

About the Podcast

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Knox Pods
Podcasts of Knox County Public Library

About your hosts

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Melissa Brenneman

Melissa listens to hours of podcasts on most days. She started the habit with the intention of taking long walks, but podcasts proved to be more addicting than exercise. She records, edits and mixes podcasts for the library.
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Alan May

Alan May works as a librarian at Lawson McGhee Library. He holds an MFA in creative writing and a Master's of Library and Information Studies, both from the University of Alabama. In his spare time, he reads and writes poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Orleans Review, The New York Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, The Idaho Review, Plume, Willow Springs, and others. He has published three books. His latest, Derelict Days in That Derelict Town: New and Uncollected Poems, is forthcoming in 2025.