The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail, But Some Don’t

By Nate Silver

Date: TUESDAY, Feb 5, 2013
Time: 6:30
Location: Hop In Brew Pub House (213 – 12th Avenue SW)

RSVP: Via Meet Up

About The Book: 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.

About The Author: Nate Silver is a statistician and political forecaster at The New York Times who became a national sensation in the United States when his predictions during the 2008 presidential election trumped most mainstream polls. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazineand has appeared as a commentator on CNN and MSNBC. He has spoken at TED and SXSW, and was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the world.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

Date: TUESDAY, Nov 27, 2012
Time: 6:30
Location: Hop In Brew Pub House (213 – 12th Avenue SW)

RSVP: Via Meet Up

About The Book:

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.
Read more about the book and the author at charlesduhigg.com

Available at: Chapters (audio book & kobo) | iTunes (audio book & digital version)

Date: Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Time: 7:00
Location: UX Guys (Suite 1190, 340 12th Avenue SW) view map 

RSVP: Via Meet Up (We are making plans to Skype with Scott!!)

About The Book:

How do we know if a hot new technology will succeed or fail? Most of us, even experts, get it wrong all the time. We depend more than we realize on wishful thinking and romanticized ideas of history. In the new paperback edition of this fascinating book, a book that has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, Slashdot.org, Lifehacker.com and in The New York Times, bestselling author Scott Berkun pulls the best lessons from the history of innovation, including the recent software and web age, to reveal powerful and suprising truths about how ideas become successful innovations — truths people can easily apply to the challenges of today. Through his entertaining and insightful explanations of the inherent patterns in how Einstein’s discovered E=mc2 or Tim Berner Lee’s developed the idea of the world wide web, you will see how to develop existing knowledge into new innovations.

Each entertaining chapter centers on breaking apart a powerful myth, popular in the business world despite it’s lack of substance. Through Berkun’s extensive research into the truth about innovations in technology, business and science, you’ll learn lessons from the expensive failures and dramatic successes of innovations past, and understand how innovators achieved what they did — and what you need to do to be an innovator yourself. You’ll discover:

• Why problems are more important than solutions
• How the good innovation is the enemy of the great
• Why children are more creative than your co-workers
• Why epiphanies and breakthroughs always take time
• How all stories of innovations are distorted by the history effect
• How to overcome people’s resistance to new ideas
• Why the best idea doesn’t often win

See more about the book on Scott’s website.

Available at Amazon | Chapters | iTunes.