You might recall Nate Silver, the statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections. He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, Silver’s final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, missing only the prediction for Indiana. Silver also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race.
In 2012, Silver’s political model correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the week leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the FiveThirtyEight team predicted that Hillary Clinton had a 64.5% chance of winning the election. Oops!
Nate Silver left FiveThirtyEight in 2023 and spent his time writing On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. As Silver explains in his Introduction, he spent a number of years pursing a career of professional poker gambler. Along the way, he began using probabilistic and statistical modeling to gamble on sports in addition to poker. Eventually, he applied his approach to predicting elections.
Much of On the Edge deals with taking risks. For Silver, everything in Life is risk. But winners find ways to manage risks with insight and analysis. With legalized sports betting and casinos attracting millions of gamblers, Silver advises strategies to take advantage of the current systems in place to make money.
I was fascinated by Silver’s transition from a professional poker player to the leading political analyst in the world. And…his decision to step away from that fame. If you’re interested in politics, gambling, risk-taking, and finance, reading On the Edge will keep you on the edge…and maybe give you an edge! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Prologue: Motivation — 1
Chapter 0: Introduction — 5
Part 1: Gambling:
Chapter 1. Optimization — 39
Chapter 2. Perception — 80
Chapter 3. Consumption — 131
Chapter 4. Competition — 170
Halftime.
Chapter 13. Inspiration: thirteen habits of highly successful risk-takers — 217
Part 2: Risk:
Chapter 5. Acceleration — 247
Chapter 6. Illusion — 398
Chapter 7. Quantification — 340
Chapter 8. Miscalculation — 382
Chapter ∞. Termination — 405
Chapter 1776. Foundation — 461
Acknowledgments, methods, and sources –– 473
Glossary: How to speak Riverian — 477
Notes — 503
Index — 545
George, I’m not given to strong language, but DANG IT, GEORGE! Reading this prompted me to check out Silver’s predictionms for the upcoming election, and now I may not rest easy till Election night!
Dan, the Presidential Election is tighter than Spandex! No one can rest easy until this Election is officially Certified!
I am so psychologically adverse to risk-taking even this book would scare me. Have never been able to even try a slot machine.
Patti, they call slot machines “one-armed bandits” for a reason. The machine is programmed to take your money.
Typo on Silver’s first name in your header, George. I guess we’ll see if “soft” chauvinism will trump not wanting a loony in the White House again. Still betting against old Malignant Narcissist. There really are too many cultists in this country.
Todd, thanks for the heads up. Once again the WORDPRESS spell checker is doing its evil work.
Yes, I’m a big fan of Nate Silver’s (despite the gambling thing), though he really let us down in 2016.
I don’t believe in betting, personally, and find it hard to understand these people who lose a fortune and keep on playing.
Jeff, I know a couple of guys who are gambling addicts. Their lives are hell with frequent losses punctuated by some rare wins. I would hate to live that way!
So how was the Bills’ party? Pizza and wings can’t go wrong.
Jeff, Diane’s Bills Party was a great success! The pizza, wings, fruit salad, green salad, shrimp, carrot cake, and apple pie delighted the guests. I was busy pouring win and brewing coffee.
Oddly enough, Lizz Winstead earlier today announced her non-fandom on Twitter, which I just stumbled across:
Lizz “Insufferable Wench” Winstead
@lizzwinstead
12h
Anyone still Nate Silvering needs to admit they have a problem and enter a 538-step program.
Todd, a LOT of people need help with their gambling tendencies. The volume of gambling commercials–Draft Kings, MGM, etc.–normalize the betting culture. I can see many people going bankrupt because they couldn’t control their gambling on their cell phones!
And too many managed even before the online “casinos” began.