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keithpeteronAug 19, 2013

Er - not so sure about Euclid being read widely as recently as 1913. Definitions of 'educated person' were very narrow then in England. 'Mechanics institutes' taught 'practical mechanics' far more than abstract geometry to working people.

Euclid is a small part of mathematics, although a powerful example of logical reasoning. If I could encourage my Level 2 students to a level where they could read and understand (say) Chapter 8 of Silver's The Signal and The Noise we might be getting somewhere.

rustyfeonJune 30, 2014

I just finished reading The Signal and The Noise by Nate Silver. It was an interesting read, but it felt a bit shallow in it's analysis.

I was feeling the need for some fiction, so I picked up Vladimir Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin. Not sure what to think about it yet, but it's interesting reading Nabokov's analysis and seeing into his mindset a little. Sheds some light on his work as well.

dmpk2konOct 18, 2013

Nate Silver comes out very clearly in support of climate change theory in his The Signal and The Noise, and elucidates why, although he goes carefully through the problems and limitations with many climate models.

Criticising models is not the same as claiming that anthropogenic global warming is false. Indeed, Nate Silver makes the point that climatologists are their own greatest critics -- they collectively know the limits of their models better than almost everyone else.

So I'm not really sure why he's in your comment. If you've read what he writes, then you'll need to be building counterarguments to much of what he wrote on the topic; "models have problems" is just part of it.

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