What’s the chance of rain?

…the for-profit weather forecasters rarely predict exactly a 50 percent chance of rain, which might seem wishy-washy and indecisive to consumers.  Instead, they’ll flip a coin and round up to 60, or down to 40, even though this makes the forecasts both less accurate and less honest.

That is from Nate Silver’s new and excellent The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t.  The profile of Robin Hanson appears on p.201.