Sorry, folks. We understood that Barack Obama was going to appear on The Daily Show last night. It turns out that his appearance is scheduled for tonight (Thursday, Oct 18).

Last night’s guest was Nate Silver. Jon Stewart was so taken with his “absolutely fascinating book,”  The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t (Penguin Press) that the interview ran to two extended segments (Pt. 1 is below; link here for Pt. 2 and Pt. 3).”

Asked who is winning the presidential race, Silver said Obama has a modest lead.

Silver, who is profiled in Vanity Fair this month, has become the go-to guy on political stats, based on his accurate predictions of the 2008 presidential election which landed him a spot on Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. His blog, “FiveThirtyEight” is now licensed to the NYT.

His book landed on the NYT Nonfiction list at #12 two weeks ago and moved down to #20 last week. Libraries are showing heavy holds.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2012 at 9:09 am and is filed under 2012 -- Fall, Nonfiction, Politics and Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.