Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Nate Silver

Quote by Nate Silver

“Most of you will have heard the maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other does not mean that one is responsible for the other. For instance, ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don't light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Haagan-Dazs.”

Quote by Nate Silver

Book:The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't
Create image

Work

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

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Nate Silver
Nate Silver

Nate Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician, writer, and election forecaster. He is best known for accurately predicting the outcomes of the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections using statistical models. Silver founded the FiveThirtyEight website, which focuses on data-driven journalism in politics, sports, and science. His book 'The Signal and the Noise' explores the art and science of prediction. Silver's work emphasizes transparency and rigorous analysis, making him a leading figure in the data journalism movement. more

You May Also Like

“The investigation described in the subsequent pages bears close relation to three sciences. It was approached by the author from the standpoint of astronomy and a desire to understand the variations of the sun. It was hoped that these variations could be more accurately studied by correlation with climatic phenomena. But the science of meteorology is still comparatively new and supplies us only with a few decades of records on which to base our conclusions. So botanical aid was sought in order to extend our knowledge of weather changes over hundreds and even thousands of years by making use of the dependence of the annual rings of trees in dry climates on the annual rainfall. If the relationship sought proves to be real, the rings in the trunks of trees give us not only a means of studying climatic changes through long periods of years, but perhaps also of tracing changes in solar activity during the same time. Thus astronomy, meteorology, and botany join in a study to which each contributes essential parts and from which, it is hoped, each may gain a small measure of benefit.”

ScienceStudyClimateAstronomyWeatherEcologyCorrelationBenefitBotanyMeteorologyTree Rings
Book:Climatic cycles and tree-growth
Create image

“Network theory confirms the view that information can take on 'a life of its own'. In the yeast network my colleagues found that 40 per cent of node pairs that are correlated via information transfer are not in fact physically connected; there is no direct chemical interaction. Conversely, about 35 per cent of node pairs transfer no information between them even though they are causally connected via a 'chemical wire' (edge). Patterns of information traversing the system may appear to be flowing down the 'wires' (along the edges of the graph) even when they are not. For some reason, 'correlation without causation' seems to be amplified in the biological case relative to random networks.”

InformationCorrelationNetworkCausationYeast
Book:The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
Create image

“The force that played havoc with the cortisol in my blood was the same force that helped my body recover; if I felt better one day and worse the next, it was unchanged. It chose no side. It gave the girl next to me in the hospital pneumonia; it also gave her white blood cells that would resist the infection. And the atoms in those cells, and the nuclei in those atoms, the same bits of carbon that were being spun into new planets in some corner of space without a name. My insignificance had become unspeakably beautiful to me. That unified force was a god too massive, too inhuman, to resist with the atheism in which I had been brought up. I became a zealot without a religion.”

FaithSpiritualityIslam
Author:G. Willow Wilson
Create image

“There were wreaths of wildflowers, tokens and tributes, even a small pair of children’s shoes hanging from a fence post by the laces - as though someone believed the child they belonged to might one day emerge from the trees to claim them. These relics were all that remained of those who were lost to the Darkwood. For what the forest took it rarely returned.”

The Year Of The WitchingAlexis Henderson
Book:The Year of the Witching
Create image