by Nate Silver
41. The 9/11 Commission Report, Kindle locations 9198–9199.
42. Aaron Clauset, “Macroevolution of Whales and the Dynamics of Morphological Disparities,” 2010 GSA Denver Annual Meeting, October 31, 2010. http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=e7VI_HcAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=e7VI_HcAAAAJ:qxL8FJ1GzNcC.
43. Winter Mason and Aaron Clauset, “Friends FTW! Friendship and Competition in Halo: Reach,” Arxiv, March 3, 2012. http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=e7VI_HcAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=e7VI_HcAAAAJ:e5wmG9Sq2KIC.
44. Brig. S. S. Chandel, “Philosophy of Terrorism in Kashmir,” Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, Terrorism Articles, Number 480, March 2001. http://www.ipcs.org/article/terrorism/philosophy-of-terrorism-in-kashmir-480.html.
45. Global Terrorism Database. http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/downloads/Codebook.pdf.
46. David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism,” Anthropoetics, 8, 1 (June 5, 2006). http://www.international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Waves-of-Modern-Terrorism.pdf.
47. There is one slight “trick” that I’ve used here, and which Clauset also uses in his published work. Terror attacks producing very small numbers of fatalities—in this case, under five deaths—do not fit the data quite as cleanly and are eliminated from the analysis. Ordinarily, you would not want to do something like this; it’s bad practice to throw out data unless you have a very good reason to do so. But in this case, it does not make much practical difference, since as numerous as small terror attacks are, they are responsible for a very small fraction of the death toll. Moreover, there may be modest biases in the coverage of the database—larger incidents are almost certain to be included, whereas those that kill just one or two people might not be. And there is some debate about whether terrorists themselves should be included in the death toll in the event of suicide attacks—RAND does include them—which has relatively more effect when the overall number of casualties is small.
48. In this case, an attack on the “scale of 9/11” refers to one that kills at least 2,749 people—the death toll at the World Trade Center site. The overall death toll on 9/11 was slightly higher—close to 3,000 people—but the RAND database and most others classify the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Flight 93 as having been separate (although related) attacks. This does not make much difference, however: an attack killing at least 3,000 people would be expected to occur about once every 44 years, rather than once every 41.
49. Peter M. Shearer and Phillip B. Stark, “Global Risk of Big Earthquakes Has Not Recently Increased,” PNAS, December19, 2011. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/12/12/1118525109.abstract.
50. In a 2012 paper that Clauset sent to me and which he submitted to the Annals of Applied Statistics, he went through a similar calculation with a more refined technique and put the risk of a 9/11-scale attack at between 11 percent and 35 percent in the 33 years between 1968 and 2001. This implies a slightly lower but still very tangible risk of a 9/11-scale attack, on the order of once per 130 years.
51. “How Many People Died as a Result of Atomic Bombings?,” Frequently Asked Questions, Radiation Effects Research Foundation. http://www.rerf.or.jp/general/qa_e/qa1.html.
52. Ira Helfand, Lachlan Forrow, and Jaya Tiwari, “Nuclear Terrorism,” British Medical Journal, 324, 7333 (February 9, 2002), pp. 356–359. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1122278/.
53. James Hoge, “‘Nuclear Terrorism’: Counting Down to the New Armageddon,” New York Times, September 5, 2004. http://www.nuclearterror.org/nyt.htm.
54. Stewart Stogel, “Bin Laden’s Goal: Kill 4 Million Americans,” NewsMax.com, July 14, 2004. http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/14/215350.shtml.
55. Per Google Scholar search. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=graham+allison&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C33&as_sdtp=.
56. Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004), Kindle edition, location 300.
57. Times Square is, in fact, named after the newspaper, as anyone who works there will be happy to point out.
58. Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, Kindle location 112.
59. J. F. Frittelli, et al., Port and Maritime Security: Background and Issues (New York: Novinka Books, 2003).
60. “Status of World Nuclear Forces;” Federation of American Scientists. http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/nukestatus.html.
61. Allison, Nuclear Terrorism, Kindle location 3258.
62. Suzanne Goldenberg, “Bush Threatened to Bomb Pakistan, Says Musharraf,” The Guardian, September 21, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/22/pakistan.usa.
63. Jay Newton-Small, “Bin Laden May Have Lived at Abbottabad Compound for Six Years,” Swampland, Time, May 3, 2011. http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/bin-laden-may-have-lived-at-abbottabad-compound-for-six-years/.
64. David Albright and Paul Brannan, “Pakistan Doubling Rate of Making Nuclear Weapons: Time for Pakistan to Reverse Course,” Institute for Science and International Security, May 16, 2011. http://www.isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/pakistan-doubling-rate-of-making-nuclear-weapons-time-for-pakistan-to-rever/.
65. “The Political Instability Index;” ViewsWire, Economist Intelligence Unit, The Economist. http://viewswire.eiu.com/site_info.asp?info_name=social_unrest_table&page=noads&rf=0.
66. Randy Borum, “Psychology of Terrorism,” Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology (New York: Springer Science, 2010), p. 62. http://worlddefensereview.com/docs/PsychologyofTerrorism0707.pdf.
67. Mohammed M. Hafez, “Suicide Terrorism in Iraq: A Preliminary Assessment of the Quantitative Data and Documentary Evidence,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 29, 6 (September 2006), pp. 531–559. https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=237341.
68. Bribery or coercion of nuclear scientists is another concern. The United States funds a program called the Nuclear Cities Initiative, which helps nuclear scientists in the former USSR find other gainful lines of employment—rather than falling into the wrong hands.
69. “Dark Winter Exercise Overview;” Center for Biosecurity, University of Pittsburg Medical Center, June 22–23, 2001. http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/events/2001_darkwinter/index.html.
70. I am using the term damage a bit loosely, since the damage from earthquakes on a human scale does not necessarily bear a one-to-one relationship to their energy release.
71. James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, “Broken Windows,” The Atlantic, March 1982. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/_atlantic_monthly-broken_windows.pdf.
72. Bernard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig, “Reefer Madness: Broken Windows Policing and Misdemeanor Marijuana Arrests in New York City, 1989–2000,” Criminology and Public Policy, University of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 317/University of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 142; 2007. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=948753.
73. Kees Keizer, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Linda Steg, “The Spreading of Disorder,” Science, 322, 5908 (December 2008), pp. 1681–1685. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5908/1681.abstract.
74. Bernard E. Harcourt and Jens Ludwig, “Broken Windows: New Evidence from New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment,” University of Chicago Law Review, 73 (2006). http://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/73.1/73_1_Harcourt_Ludwig.pdf.
75. Bruce Schneier, “Beyond Security Theater,” Schneier on Security, November 13, 2009. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_security.html.
76. Ibid., Kindle location 1035.
77. Nate Silver, “Crunching the Risk Numbers,” Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2010. http://Online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703481004574646963713065116.html.
78. Russian Authorities: Terrorist Bombing at Moscow Airport Kills 35;” CNN Wire; January 24, 2011. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-24/world/russia.ai
rport.explosion_1_suicide-bomber-moscow-police-moscow-during-rush-hour?_s=PM:WORLD.
79. Ken Silverstein, “The Al Qaeda Clubhouse: Members Lacking,” Harper’s magazine, July 5, 2006. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/07/sb-al-qaeda-new-members-badly-needed-1151963690.
80. Aaron Clauset, Maxwell Young, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “On the Frequency of Severe Terrorist Events,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51, 1 (February 2007), pp. 58–87. http://www.cabdyn.ox.ac.uk/complexity_PDFs/CABDyN%20Seminars%202007_2008/Frequency%20Events_Gleditsch.pdf.
81. Jerusalem Post poll by TNS/Teleseker of 500 Jewish Israelis, January 23–24, 2012. http://thejerusalemreport.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/poll-new.jpg.
82. David Weisburd, Tal Jonathan, and Simon Perry, “The Israeli Model for Policing Terrorism: Goals, Strategies, and Open Questions,” Criminal Justice and Behavior, 36, 12 (December 2009), pp. 1259–1278. http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:ydYnY99dbqwJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33.
83. “Iraq: What Did Congress Know, and When?,” FactCheck.org, November 19, 2005. http://www.factcheck.org/iraq_what_did_congress_know_and_when.html.
84. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Postwar Findings About Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments;” U.S. Senate, 109th Congress, 2nd Session; September 8, 2006. http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf.
85. Martin Chulov and Helen Pidd, “Defector Admits to WMD Lies That Triggered Iraq War,” The Guardian, February 15, 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-lies-iraq-war.
86. Schneier, “Beyond Security Theater,” Kindle locations 1321–1322.
87. Harvey E. Lapan and Todd Sandler, “Terrorism and Signalling,” European Journal of Political Economy, 9, 3 (August 1993), pp. 383–397;
88. The 9/11 Commission Report, Kindle locations 9286–9287.
89. Michael A. Babyak, “What You See May Not Be What You Get: A Brief, Nontechnical Introduction to Overfitting in Regression-Type Models,” Psychosomatic Medicine, 66 (2004), pp. 411–.421; 2004. http://os1.amc.nl/mediawiki/images/Babyak_-_overfitting.pdf.
CONCLUSION
1. Brian Cartwright, “That Great Derek Jeter Conspiracy,” FanGraphs, January 17, 2009. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/the-great-derek-jeter-conspiracy/.
2. Halley’s Comet was first sited on Christmas Day in 1758. See Peter Lancaster Brown, Halley and His Comet (Suffolk, England: Blandford Press, 1985).
3. Mary Frances Williams, “The Sidus Iulium, the Divinity of Men, and the Golden Age in Virgil’s Aeneid,” Leeds International Classical Studies, vol. 2, issue 1, 2003. http://lics.leeds.ac.uk/2003/200301.pdf
4. The exact date of the invention of the World Wide Web is disputed but in 1990 Berners-Lee established the first successful connection between an HTTP client and the Internet. The set of hypertext documents called the World Wide Web are not to be confused with the Internet, the network by which the World Wide Web is accessed, which as everyone knows was invented by Al Gore.
5. Glenn Gunzelmann and Kevin A. Gluck, “Knowledge Tracing for Complex Training Applications: Beyond Bayesian Mastery Estimates,” Air Force Research Laboratory,; Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation, 2004, pp. 383–84. http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/papers/710/gunzelmann_gluck-2004.pdf.
6. Sarah Lichtenstein and Baruch Fischhoff, “Training for Calibration,” prepared for U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, ARI Technical Report TR-78-A32; November 1978. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA069703.
7. Christopher J. Gill, Lora Sabin and Christopher H. Schmidt, “Why Clinicians Are Natural Bayesians,” British Medical Journal, vol. 330; May 7, 2005. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557240/.
8. Tomasso Poggio and Federico Girosi, “A Theory of Networks for Approximation and Learning,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Center for Biological Information Processing, Whitaker College, A.I. Memo 1140, C.B.I.P. Paper 31, July 1989. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA212359.
9. Amanda Ripley, The Unthinkable (New York: Random House, Kindle edition), location 337–360.
10. Ibid., Kindle location 3688–98.
11. Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Kindle Edition), location 160–162.
12. Jay Rosen, “The View from Nowhere: Questions and Answers,” Jay Rosen’s Press Think, November 10, 2010. http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answers/.
13. This is just a personal reflection—not an empirical observation—but I am being somewhat literal about this point. When I was working on this book and came across a thorny problem that I couldn’t quite resolve, I found it much more productive to walk around, subjecting my brain to random inputs, than to stare at my computer screen or sit in a coffee shop. One of the advantages of living in New York is that it offers 24/7 access to the spontaneous behavior of eight million human beings who might jog your mind or your memory.
14. This is derived from Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer. http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/special/serenity.html
15. The data shown in figure C-2 is based on searches conducted of the JSTOR catalog of print journals. I searched for cases in which either the word “predictable” or “unpredictable” appeared in the journal article at least once (but not both words in the same article), breaking down the results by the decade of publication. The percentages reflected in figure C-2 represent the number of uses of “predictable” and “unpredictable,” respectively, relative to their total number.
16. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1994).
17. Global per capita GDP growth averaged 3.4 percent per year in the 1950s but 2.6 percent in the 1970s. See J. Bradford DeLong, Estimating World GDP, One Million B.C.—Present; (Berkeley: University of California, 1988). http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/1998_Draft/World_GDP/Estimating_World_GDP.html.
18. The number of patent applications filed with the U.S. Patent and Trade Office rose by 18 percent over the decade of the 1950s but just 1 percent in the 1970s. See “U.S. Patent Activity Calendar Years 1790 to the Present,” U.S. Patent and Trade Office. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.htm.
19. Google Books’ Ngram Viewer. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=predictable%2Cunpredictable&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=4&smoothing=3.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Page numbers beginning with 459 refer to endnotes.
Abbottabad, Pakistan, 434
accuracy, 129, 130, 133, 312
confidence and, 203
precision vs., 46, 46, 225
presentation vs., 137–38
AccuWeather, 128, 131, 132, 133
Achuthan, Lakshman, 196
acid rain, 400
Adams, Douglas, 26
adaptiveness, 98
Afghanistan, Soviet war with, 52
Africa, 379
African Plate, 143–44
aftershocks, 154, 161, 174, 476–77
agent-based models, 226, 227–29, 230
aggregate predictions, see consensus
aging curve, 79, 81–83, 81, 83, 99, 164
aging population, 189
Agriculture Department, U.S., 123
AIDS, 213, 214, 215, 486
AIG, 37
Air Force, U.S., 108
Air India, 425, 429
air pollution, 400
airport security, 439
Ajedrecista, El, 265
Akerlof, George, 32–33, 35, 466
Alabama, Uni
versity of, 394
Alaska, 149, 438
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, 425
algorithms, 265, 426
all-in bet, 306
Allison, Graham, 433–35
Al Qaeda, 422, 424, 425, 426, 433, 435–36, 440, 444
Alzheimer’s, 420
Amazon.com, 352–53, 500
American exceptionalism, 10
American Football League (AFL), 185–86, 480
American League, 79
American Stock Exchange, 334
Amsterdam, 228
Anchorage, Alaska, 149
Anderson, Chris, 9
Angelo, Tommy, 324–26, 328
animals, earthquake prediction and, 147–48
Annals of Applied Statistics, 511–12
ANSS catalog, 478
Antarctic, 401
anthropology, 228
antiretroviral therapy, 221
Apple, 264
Archilochus, 53
Arctic, 397, 398
Arianism, 490
Aristotle, 2, 112
Armstrong, Scott, 380–82, 381, 388, 402–3, 405, 505, 508
Arrhenius, Svante, 376
artificial intelligence, 263, 293
Asia, 210
asset-price bubble, 190
asymmetrical information, 35
Augustine, Saint, 112
Australia, 379
autism, 218, 218, 487
availability heuristic, 424
avian flu, see bird flu
A/Victoria flu strain, 205–6, 208, 483
Babbage, Charles, 263, 283
Babyak, Michael, 167–68
baby boom, 31
Babylonians, 112
Bachmann, Michele, 217
bailout bills, 19, 461
Bak, Per, 172
Baker, Dean, 22
Bane, Eddie, 87
Bank of England, 35
Barbour, Haley, 140
baseball, 9, 10, 16, 74–106, 128, 426, 446, 447, 451n
aging curve in, 79, 81–83, 81, 83, 99, 164
betting on, 286
luck vs. skill in, 322
minor league system in, 92–93