Here One Moment

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty, 501 pages

On a flight from Hobart to Sydney, an unremarkable older woman stood up from her seat at the front of the plane and began walking toward the back, methodically prediction the age and cause of death of everyone on board. While everyone was shaken, nobody could agree if she was the real deal or just crazy, even after the first person died according to the "Death Lady's" prophecy.

This was an intriguing examination of fate, determinism, free will, and our own obsessive tendencies. At times it was hard to keep track of who was who (it's a LARGE cast of characters, after all) and I kind of wish we'd heard about a few more people at the end, but really, it was an excellent book. I can see why there's such a long wait for the book.

The signal and the noise

The signal and the noise: why so many predictions fail - but some don't by Nate Silver 534 pgs.

This book took some effort.  It isn't something that I could read quickly and I ended up checking it out several times to get through it and read all the footnotes.  Nate Silver made quite a name for himself blogging for the New York Times and correctly predicting all of the political races in the 2012 election including president, senate and house seats.  He did it by looking at the polls and doing analysis.  He didn't go on gut feeling but actual statistics.  What a novel idea!  I'm not expert with statistics but do remember some little things from my classes like how you can actually figure out their accuracy.  It seems like basic statistics should be a required class.  Not that it will get us to Silver's level, but at least it makes us able to read his book.

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