Superforecasting

From one of the world's most highly regarded social scientists a transformative book on the habits of mind that lead to the best predictions. Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future whether buying stocks crafting policy launching a new product or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight and Tetlock has spent the past decade trying to figure out why. What makes some people so good? And can this talent be taught? In Superforecasting Tetlock and coauthor Dan Gardner offer a masterwork on prediction drawing on decades of research and the results of a massive government-funded forecasting tournament. The Good Judgment Project involves tens of thousands of ordinary people - including a Brooklyn filmmaker a retired pipe installer and a former ballroom dancer - who set out to forecast global events. Some of the volunteers have turned out to be astonishingly good. They've beaten other benchmarks competitors and prediction markets. They've even beaten the collective judgment of intelligence analysts with access to classified information. They are superforecasters. In this groundbreaking and accessible book Tetlock and Gardner show us how we can learn from this elite group. Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future - whether in business finance politics international affairs or daily life - and is destined to become a modern classic.