Superforecasting

The Art and Science of Prediction

By: Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner

Narrated by: Joel Richards

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.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2015 Philip Tetlock Consulting, Inc., and Connaught Street, Inc. (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Not totally pointless

I recently enrolled in a sports prediction ring with some friends and I chose this book because I wanted to see if it might give me some insights into the art/science of prediction in general. Clearly the focus of this book is not sport at all, but I thought there must be some generalizable, transferable aspects – and there are. But on the whole I’d say the book mainly matched my existing perceptions of how to predict the future, although I did pick up a few nice nuggets along the way and there was some value in the book’s confirmation of some things I felt already knew.

The author states that there is no such thing as fate and that everything is the result of happenstance and probability. For example, I know that my being born was the random product of the circumstances of my parents’ meeting, the fact that none of their parents were killed in World War 2, the arbitrary time and place where I was conceived and the incredible odds against me winning a sperm race. I've never believed that life is predetermined by fate or destiny. So this was not news to me at all.

So how do you make good predictions? A few things help: It helps to be numerate, to diligently study the subject matter in question, to update your predictions as circumstances change, to keep an open mind.

There were a few things I hadn’t realised, such as the fact that lay people predict the future just as well, if not better, than experts - as long as they do the necessary research – and also, that groups fare better than individuals. There is a kind of ‘emergent property’ of groups whereby the totality is greater than the sum of the parts, as long as the group members interact cooperatively.

Overall I’d say that this book is worth the read, but I predict with 73% certainty that I’ll have forgotten it in 6 months’ time.

Very interesting book with great narration.

This was a very interesting research with deep insights in a number of areas around how to perceive the world differently. The narration was clear and easily understandable. Highly recommended read.

Interesting but boring

This book had interesting points, but the focus was too heavily on politics that some of the key messages were lost. It would have been nice to have more examples that were not so focused on politics.

I suggest taking notes

This book manages to almost accidentally sum up a lot of key concepts from much harder and more difficult books (such as Thinking Fast and Slow). I'll be reading this one again.

Superinformative

One of the more informative books I've read in a long time. Provides a lot of supporting information about conclusions reached, including some math & statistics (but presented in a way that is easy to understand). Good narration.