Superforecasting

is fifty-five and retired, although he says if someone offered him a job he would consider it. So he has free time. And he spends some of it forecasting.

Bill has answered roughly three hundred questions like Will Russia officially annex additional Ukrainian territory in the next three months? and In the next year, will any country withdraw from the eurozone? They are questions that matter. And they re difficult. Corporations, banks, embassies, and intelligence agencies struggle to answer such questions all the time. Will North Korea detonate a nuclear device before the end of this year? How many additional countries will report cases of the Ebola virus in the next eight months? Will India or Brazil become a permanent member of the UN Security Council in the next two years? Some of the questions are downright obscure, at least for most of us. Will NATO invite new countries to join the Membership Action Plan (MAP) in the next nine months? Will the Kurdistan Regional Government hold a referendum on national independence this year? If a non-Chinese telecommunications firm wins a contract to provide Internet services in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in the next two years, will Chinese citizens have access to Facebook and/or Twitter? When Bill first sees one of these questions, he may have no clue how to answer it. What on earth is the Shanghai Free Trade Zone? he may think. But he does his homework. He gathers facts, balances clashing arguments, and settles on an answer.

No one bases decisions on Bill Flack s forecasts, or asks Bill to share his thoughts on CNN. He has never been invited to Davos to sit on a panel with Tom Friedman. And that s unfortunate. Because Bill Flack is a remarkable forecaster. We know that because each one of Bill s p

interesting business and finance books published in 2015.
John Kay, The Financial Times

"One of Tetlock's key points is that these aren't innate skills: they can be both taught and learned... Tetlock's 'Ten Commandments For Aspiring Superforecasters' should probably have a place of honor in most business meeting rooms."
Forbes

"The key to becoming a better forecaster, if not a super one, according to Tetlock is the same as any other endeavor: practice, practice, practice."
The Street

"In this captivating book, Tetlock argues that success is all about the approach: foresight is not a gift but rather a product of a particular way of thinking... In each chapter, the author augments his research with compelling interviews, anecdotes, and historical context, using accessible real-world examples to frame what could otherwise be dense subject matter. His writing is so engaging and his argument so tantalizing, readers will quickly be drawn into the challenge - in the appendix, the author provides a concise training manual to do just that. A must-read field guide for the intellectually curious."
Kirkus Reviews, starred

"Tetlock and Gardner believe anyone can improve their forecasting ability by learning from the way they work. If that's true, people in business and finance who make an effort to do so have a lot to gain  and those who don't, much to lose."
The Financial Post

"Superforecasting is a very good book. In fact it is essential reading  which I have never said in any of my previous MT reviews... It should be on every manager's and investor's reading list around the topics du jour of decision-making, prediction and behavioural economics."
Management Today

"I've been hard on social science, even suggesting that 'social science' is an oxymoron. I noted, however, that social science has enormous potential, especially when it combines 'rigorous empiricism with a resistance to absolute answers.' The work of Philip Tetlock possesses these qualities."
Scientific American

"One of the best books I've read this year... Superforecasting is a must read book."
Seeking Alpha

"Keen to show that not all forecasting is a flop, Tetlock has conducted a new experiment that shows how you can make good forecasts, ones that routinely improve on predictions made by even the most well-informed expert. The book is full of excellent advice  it is the best thing I have read on predictions, which is a subject I am keen on... Gardner has turned the research into readable examples and a flowing text, without losing rigour... This book shows that you can be better at forecasting."
The Times of London

"We now expect every medicine to be tested before it is used. We ought to expect that everybody who aspires to high office is trained to understand why they are so likely to make mistakes forecasting complex events... Politics is harder than physics but Tetlock has shown that it doesn't have to be like astrology."
The Spectator

Philip Tetlock is the world expert on a vital subject. Superforecasting is the wonderful story of how he and his research team got ordinary people to beat experts in a very serious game. It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an uncertain world. Read it.  
Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Superforecasting is a rare book that will make you smarter and wiser. One of the giants of behavioral science reveals how to improve at predicting the future.
Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals 
 
The best way to know if an idea is right is to see if it predicts the future. But which ideas, which methods, which people have a track record of non-obvious predictions vindicated by the course of events? The answers will surprise you, and they have radical implications for politics, policy, journalism, education, and even epistemology how we can best gain knowledge about the world. The casual style of Superforecasting belies the profundity of its message.
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

Philip Tetlock s Superforecasting is a common-sense guide to thinking about decision-making and the future by a man who knows this terrain like no one else.
Ian Bremmer, Bloomberg Business  Best Books of 2015

In this accessible and lively book, Tetlock and Gardner recognize the centrality of probabilistic thinking to sound forecasting. Whether you are a policymaker or anyone else who wants to approach decisions with great rigor, Superforecasting will serve as a highly useful guide.
Robert E. Rubin, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary
 
How well can we predict the future, really? There is no better way to answer that question than to read this book. You will come away disillusioned about the ability of experts, but also enlightened about how the best forecasters do it and maybe even hopeful about your own prospects.
Tyler Cowen, Director of the George Mason University Mercatus Center and author of Average Is Over
 
For thousands of years, people have listened to those who foretold the future with confidence and little accountability. In this book, Tetlock and Gardner free us from our foolishness. Full of great stories and simple statistics, Superforecasting gives us a new way of thinking about the complexity of the world, the limitations of our minds, and why some people can consistently outpredict a dart-throwing chimp. Tetlock s research has the potential to revolutionize foreign policy, economic policy, and your own day-to-day decisions.
Jonathan Haidt, New York University Stern School of Business, and author of The Righteous Mind
 
[Superforecasting] shows that you can get information from a lot of different sources. Knowledge is all around us and it doesn t have to come from the experts.
Joe LaVorgna, Bloomberg Business  Best Books of 2015
 
Good judgment and good forecasting are rare, but they turn out to be made of teachable skills. By forcing forecasters to compete, Tetlock discovered what the skills are and how they work, and this book teaches the ability to any interested reader.
Stewart Brand, President, The Long Now Foundation
 
Philip Tetlock is renowned for demonstrating that most experts are no better than dart-throwing monkeys at predicting elections, wars, economic collapses and other events. In his brilliant new book, Tetlock offers a much more hopeful message, based once again on his own ground-breaking research. He shows that certain people can forecast events with accuracy much better than chance and so, perhaps, can the rest of us, if we emulate the critical thinking of these superforecasters. The self-empowerment genre doesn t get any smarter and more sophisticated than this.
John Horgan, Director, Center for Science Writings, Stevens Institute of Technology
 
Superforecasting is the rare book that is both scholarly and engaging. The lessons are scientific, compelling, and enormously practical. Anyone who is in the forecasting business and that s all of us should drop what they are doing and read it.
Michael J. Mauboussin, Head of Global Financial Strategies, Credit Suisse

[Superforecasting] highlights the techniques and attributes of superforecasters that is, those whose predictions have been demonstrated to be remarkably accurate in a manner that s both rigorous and readable. The lessons are directly relevant to business, finance, government, and politics.
Peter Orszag, Bloomberg Business  Best Books of 2015
 
There isn t a social scientist in the world I admire more than Phil Tetlock.
Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist
 
From the Oracle of Delphi to medieval astrologers to modern overconfident experts, forecasters have been either deluded or fraudulent. For the first time, Superforecasting reveals the secret of making honest, reliable, effective, useful judgments about the future.
Aaron Brown, Chief Risk Officer of AQR Capital Management and author of The Poker Face of Wall Street
 
Socrates had the insight in know thyself, Kahneman delivered the science in Thinking, Fast and Slow, and now Tetlock has something we can all apply in Superforecasting.
Juan Luis Perez, Global Head of UBS Group Research