Here are 100 books that Fortune Tellers fans have personally recommended if you like
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Accurate and precise forecasting is essential for successful planning and policy from economics to epidemiology. We have been keen to understand why so many forecasts turn out to be highly inaccurate since making dreadful forecasts ourselves, and advising UK government agencies (Treasury, Parliament, Bank of England) during turbulent periods. As simple extrapolation often beats model-based forecasting, we have been developing improved methods that draw on the best aspects of both, and have published more than 60 articles and 6 books attracting more than 6000 citations by other scholars. Our recommended books cover a wide range of forecasting methods—suggesting there is no optimal way to look into the future.
This is a book that brings forecasters down to earth with a bang – we are not all super-forecasters! There is no magic involved in forecasting – seeing into the future is impossible. But Tetlock and Gardner show that good decision-making should be based on a set of guidelines that can be adapted to any situation. The writing is slick, given one of the authors is a science journalist, and it provides salutary reading for any would be practical forecaster.
'A manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.' Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow _________________________ What if we could improve our ability to predict the future?
Everything we do involves forecasts about how the future will unfold. Whether buying a new house or changing job, designing a new product or getting married, our decisions are governed by implicit predictions of how things are likely to turn out. The problem is, we're not very good at it.
In a landmark, twenty-year study, Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed that the average expert was only…
Accurate and precise forecasting is essential for successful planning and policy from economics to epidemiology. We have been keen to understand why so many forecasts turn out to be highly inaccurate since making dreadful forecasts ourselves, and advising UK government agencies (Treasury, Parliament, Bank of England) during turbulent periods. As simple extrapolation often beats model-based forecasting, we have been developing improved methods that draw on the best aspects of both, and have published more than 60 articles and 6 books attracting more than 6000 citations by other scholars. Our recommended books cover a wide range of forecasting methods—suggesting there is no optimal way to look into the future.
A wonderful read on how weather forecasting has improved so dramatically since Robert Fitzroy’s initial efforts in 1859. The amazing developments in mathematical modelling of the climate and advances in super-computers are excitedly and clearly described, starting from Blum wondering how one week ahead it was possible to forecast that Hurricane Sandy would strike New York.
'Revelatory ... convey[s] the technical brilliance and political significance of an achievement that hides in plain sight' Telegraph
From satellites circling the Earth, to weather stations far out in the ocean, through some of the most ingenious minds and advanced algorithms at work today - In this gripping investigation, Andrew Blum takes us on a global journey. Our destination: the simulated models weather scientists have constructed of our planet, which spin faster than time, turning chaos into prediction, offering glimpses of our future with eerie precision.
This collaborative invention spans the Earth and relies on continuous co-operation between all nations…
Accurate and precise forecasting is essential for successful planning and policy from economics to epidemiology. We have been keen to understand why so many forecasts turn out to be highly inaccurate since making dreadful forecasts ourselves, and advising UK government agencies (Treasury, Parliament, Bank of England) during turbulent periods. As simple extrapolation often beats model-based forecasting, we have been developing improved methods that draw on the best aspects of both, and have published more than 60 articles and 6 books attracting more than 6000 citations by other scholars. Our recommended books cover a wide range of forecasting methods—suggesting there is no optimal way to look into the future.
When can we trust a forecast? Given how often forecasts end up being very wide of the mark, a degree of scepticism might well be warranted. Paul Goodwin provides an entertaining account of forecasting, arguing that intuition may serve us well in some settings, but that computer-based analysis of big data might be expected to prevail in others.
Whether it's an unforeseen financial crash, a shock election result or a washout summer that threatens to ruin a holiday in the sun, forecasts are part and parcel of our everyday lives. We rely wholeheartedly on them, and become outraged when things don't go exactly to plan.
But should we really put so much trust in predictions? Perhaps gut instincts can trump years of methodically compiled expert knowledge? And when exactly is a forecast not a forecast? Forewarned will answer all of these intriguing questions, and many more.
Packed with fun anecdotes and startling facts, Forewarned is a myth-busting guide…
As a professional statistician, I am naturally interested in AI and data science. However, in our current information age, everyone, in all segments of society, needs to understand the basics of AI and data science. These basics include such things as what these disciplines are, what they can contribute to society, and perhaps most importantly, what can go wrong. However, I have found that much of the literature on these topics is highly technical and beyond the reach of most readers. These books are specifically selected because they are readable by virtually everyone, and yet convey the key concepts needed to be data-literate in the 21st century. Enjoy!
This book, by Nate Silver of 538 fame, explains in a straightforward manner why so many predictions by “experts,” from weather forecasts to sports outcomes to election polling to economics, ultimately prove wrong.
It relates to understanding the “signal,” the underlying science that is often revealed through trends and patterns in data, relative to the “noise,” the random or unpredictable variations always present in data. Silver also explains the concept of conditional probability, probability when provided with some relevant information, in an unusually clear manner.
The book reads more like a casual conversation with the author, rather than a statistics textbook.
UPDATED FOR 2020 WITH A NEW PREFACE BY NATE SILVER
"One of the more momentous books of the decade." —The New York Times Book Review
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction,…
I am a historian and economist who is fascinated by the intersection of the economy and culture. This started for me with the idea that economic ideas were shaped by the cultural context in which they emerged, which resulted in my book on the Viennese Students. Over time it has expanded to an interest for the markets for the arts from music to the visual arts, as well as the way in which culture and morality influence economic dynamism. Economics and the humanities are frequently believed to be at odds with each other, but I hope to inspire a meaningful conversation between them.
Biographies of economists can be dull and technical, but not if their subject is John Maynard Keynes. The flamboyant British economist was a member of the Bloomsbury Group of Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, married the famous Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, and had a group of followers known as the Cambridge circus. The great skill of Skidelsky is his ability to integrate the many facets of Keynes life, from the exciting intellectual milieu of Cambridge and the cultural milieu in London to the economic problems of war, peace, and the Great Depression. This book demonstrates in vivid terms that economics is done by economists with an underlying vision. In Schumpeter’s words that of Keynes was that of: “the arteriosclerotic economy whose opportunities for rejuvenating venture were in permanent decline.”
Robert Skidelsky's three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes has been acclaimed as the authoritative account of the great economist-statesman's life. Here, Skidelsky has revised and abridged his magnum opus into one definitive book, which examines in its entirety the intellectual and ideological journey that led an extraordinarily gifted young man to concern himself with the practical problems of an age overshadowed by war. John Maynard Keynes offers a sympathetic account of the life of a passionate visionary and an invaluable insight into the economic philosophy that still remains at the centre of political and economic thought.…
During my childhood I heard many stories of economic collapse, depression, and subsequent war. This created an early awareness of the power of financial forces to shape the welfare, security, and life chances of millions. Since then, I have worked to better understand how such things happen and what could be done about them. I have focused on the nature of power and studied the contingent and contested political processes that shape financial orders. This contestation opens up the possibility of change and makes me hope that future financial orders will, eventually, be based on a wiser, more encompassing understanding of welfare, security, and perhaps even justice, than has been the case so far.
I admire Keynes and I love this book. Not only is it beautifully written and fun to read but it is also important.
Keynes’ thought remains relevant and Carter does an excellent job of connecting Keynes’ ideas to our present-day predicaments. I feel much of Keynes’ work was motivated by a desire to prevent a repeat of World War I. When this failed, he set about doing his best to make sure that World War II ended with a more durable peace.
Keynes brought a skeptical eye to economic orthodoxy. I regret he died relatively young and was unable to weigh in on the events of the 1970s. Indeed, I regret he is not able to comment on the events of the 2020s but at least this book is. Not to be missed.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “outstanding new intellectual biography of John Maynard Keynes [that moves] swiftly along currents of lucidity and wit” (The New York Times), illuminating the world of the influential economist and his transformative ideas
“A timely, lucid and compelling portrait of a man whose enduring relevance is always heightened when crisis strikes.”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE HILLMAN PRIZE FOR BOOK JOURNALISM • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE…
I’ve studied Smith and his Scottish contemporaries, off and on, for over fifty years. My whole professional career has been spent at Glasgow University where Smith was both a student and later professor. I thus have a personal affinity to him and his work, all the more so because his published writings were all trailed in his professorial classroom. While I have published extensively on Smith, the particular book of mine that I’ve selected was chosen because I wanted to distill all my scholarship into a volume that would be accessible to non-academics.
What was impressive about this book and what made me recommend it (on the back cover) was how it succeeded in covering the full range of Smith’s work while demonstrating that it possesses a common unifying thread.
The author has already written a learned treatment of Smith (based on his doctoral dissertation); this volume, as befits a designedly introductory book, is written without jargon, in careful, clear prose. While students will gain the most benefit (the purpose of the series of which it is a part), it is, as well as informative, accessible to anyone with an initial interest in Smith, which it will succeed in broadening and deepening.
Almost everyone has heard of Adam Smith, founding father of modern economics and author of Wealth of Nations. There is, however, much more to him than this.
This new introduction gives a crystal clear overview of the entirety of Smith's thought. It demonstrates how Smith's economic theories fit into a larger system of thought that encompasses moral philosophy, philosophy of science, legal and political theory, and aesthetics. Examining the central arguments of his major works, ranging from The Theory of Moral Sentiments to his lectures on jurisprudence and beyond, Smith's thought is explained in its full intellectual and historical context.…
I am a mathematician, based at Oxford University, following up the ideas of the Nobel prizewinner Roger Penrose on fundamental physics. But I am best known for writing a biography of Alan Turing, the founder of computer science. I did this at a time when he was almost unknown to the public, long before computers invaded popular culture. And it meant giving a serious account of two kinds of secret history: the codebreaking of the Second World War and the life of an unapologetic gay man. Since then I have also created a supporting website. When I was drawn to find out about Alan Turing, it was not only because he was a mathematician. I seized the chance to bring together many themes from science, history, and human life. This broad approach is reflected in my recommendations. I am choosing books that hint at the great scope of themes related to Turing’s life and work.
My fourth pick is another biography, of the economist John Maynard Keynes. Richard Davenport-Hines has divided up his account into ‘seven lives’. Yet by taking his personal life and sexual identity seriously, Davenport-Hines achieves an outstanding unification. Seriousness is not solemnity: readers will find here a delightful story about Keynes admiring Alan Turing’s fingernails at King’s College, Cambridge. There is much more to illustrate the extraordinary King’s College ambiance in which Turing found his home, and deeper connections: in late 1946, both were crossing the Atlantic, Keynes to rescue the British economy, Turing on his start-up of the computer industry. Keynesian economics are newly relevant now, but the liberal élite culture in which it was hatched may still surprise readers. When Turing started war work at Bletchley Park, he wrote to Keynes’s circle that Dillwyn Knox was ‘his boss’. Did he know, as Richard Davenport-Hines explains, that Knox had been…
From the bestselling and award-winning author of 'An English Affair', a dazzlingly original thematic biography which throws fresh light on the greatest economist of the twentieth century.
John Maynard Keynes is the man who saved Britain from financial crisis not once but twice - over the course of two World Wars. He remains a highly influential figure, nearly 70 years after his death. But who was he?
In this entertaining biography, Richard Davenport-Hines gives us the man behind the economics: the connoisseur, intellectual, public official and statesman who was equally at ease socialising with the Bloomsbury Group as he was…
I am an economics professor at Victoria University of Wellington. As a previous Secretary of the New Zealand Treasury and Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, I have had quite a bit of experience watching economists’ ideas succeed and fail in the real world. I have written a number of books about policy economists and their lives in peace and wartime. (And a couple of novels too!)
Under the headings of hope, fear, and confidence, Nasar takes us through the lives, the ideas, the failings, and arguments of several dozen economists, in a lively journalistic fashion. From the last chaotic days of Joseph Schumpeter’s failing post-war Vienna to Joan Robinson’s 1950s propaganda trip to Stalin’s Moscow, she gives us an illuminating view of history and what economists did to try to improve it.
An instant New York Times bestseller, in a sweeping narrative the author of the esteemed A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. Grand Pursuit is the epic story of the making of modern economics, of how economics rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands.
A New York Times bestseller, this sweeping narrative from the author of A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women…
I am an economics professor at Victoria University of Wellington. As a previous Secretary of the New Zealand Treasury and Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, I have had quite a bit of experience watching economists’ ideas succeed and fail in the real world. I have written a number of books about policy economists and their lives in peace and wartime. (And a couple of novels too!)
This is a heavier read taking us through a group history of the Austrian School of Economics from the coffee houses of Imperial Vienna to the modern-day Libertarians. Economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Joseph Schumpeter originated ideas that have had a big impact on economics and politics, and have been much debated ever since.
A group history of the Austrian School of Economics, from the coffeehouses of imperial Vienna to the modern-day Tea Party
The Austrian School of Economics-a movement that has had a vast impact on economics, politics, and society, especially among the American right-is poorly understood by supporters and detractors alike. Defining themselves in opposition to the mainstream, economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Joseph Schumpeter built the School's international reputation with their work on business cycles and monetary theory. Their focus on individualism-and deep antipathy toward socialism-ultimately won them a devoted audience among the upper echelons of business…
