Quotes About Noise

System noise is inconsistency, and inconsistency damages the credibility of the system.

the preference for causal thinking also contributes to the neglect of noise as a source of error, because noise is a fundamentally statistical notion.

judgment, there is noise—and more of it than we think.

bias is a compelling figure, while noise is the background to which we pay no attention. That is how we remain largely unaware of a large flaw in our judgment.

But our focus is on judgments in which variability is undesirable. System noise is a problem of systems, which are organizations, not markets.

You may believe that you are subtler, more insightful, and more nuanced than the linear caricature of your thinking. But in fact, you are mostly noisier.

For the insurance company, the illusion of agreement was shattered only by the noise audit. How had the leaders of the company remained unaware of their noise problem? There are several possible answers here, but one that seems to play a large role in many settings is simply the discomfort of disagreement.

Level noise is when judges show different levels of severity. Pattern noise is when they disagree with one another on which defendants deserve more severe or more lenient treatment. And part of pattern noise is occasion noise—when judges disagree with themselves.

Level noise is variability in the average level of judgments by different judges. Pattern noise is variability in judges' responses to particular cases.

Wherever there is judgment, there is noise—and more of it than we think.

You may have noticed that the decomposition of system noise into level noise and pattern noise follows the same logic as the error equation in the previous chapter, which decomposed error into bias and noise. This time, the equation can be written as follows: System Noise2 = Level Noise2 + Pattern Noise2

Averaging is mathematically guaranteed to reduce noise:

Whatever their flaws, rankings are less noisy than ratings.

Ça fait du bruit, une pensée, et le goût de lire est un héritage du besoin de dire.

All the shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and you cannot get away from it.

Max made the sort of "?" noise a bear would make on being kicked awake in midwinter.

Gunpowder's superior noise, its superior posturing ability, made it ascendant on the battlefield.

He had begun to accept the background noise of the falls was no natural phenomenon but rather the thundering tears of gods.

I think when you're learning an instrument, you are restricted because much of it is the noise of individual theory and your ability to play the instrument.

A]ll knowledge goes through both stages, the annunciation out of noise into fact, and the disintegration back into noise again. The process involved was the making of increasingly finer distinctions. The outcome was an endless series of theoretical catastrophes.

Squeak sq-squeak sq-squeak: fifty tennis shoes jumping and skipping against the waxed wood floor. Dodgeball. Perfect. It smells like the armpits of Satan in here.

The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That's why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.

Another pop, this time followed by the tinkle of glass sprinkling on the floor.

His own life made very little noise of its own, and he found that in silence there was something downright perilous: It had enemies in it that only sound could drive out.