Nate Silver

“When human judgment and big data intersect there are some funny things that happen.”

“When you try to predict future E.R.A.'s with past E.R.A.'s, you're making a mistake.”

“Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge.”

“We're not that much smarter than we used to be, even though we have much more information - and that means the real skill now is learning how to pick out the useful information from all this noise.”

“By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes.”

“In politics people build whole reputations off of getting one thing right.”

“First of all, I think it's odd that people who cover politics wouldn't have any political views.”

“I was looking for something like baseball, where there's a lot of data and the competition was pretty low. That's when I discovered politics.”

“I guess I don't like the people in politics very much, to be blunt.”

“I've become invested with this symbolic power. It really does transcend what I'm actually doing and what I actually deserve.”

“Success makes you less intimidated by things.”

“People still don't appreciate how ephemeral success is.”

“A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.”