For the first time in a long time — and most likely the last time until the election — FiveThirtyEight failed to publish an update Wednesday. But we had a good excuse: FiveThirtyEight’s own Nate Silver was the featured guest on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” to talk about his new book, “The Signal and the Noise.” (Apologies to President Obama, who is going on the show Thursday night and has to follow Nate.)

Nate spoke with Mr. Stewart about the difficulty separating signal from noise when gauging who is ahead in the presidential race:





Nate also discussed how campaigns are looking for signals, in targeting potential voters:



