Author(s): Philip Tetlock

BUSINESS & FINANCE

What if we could improve our ability to predict the future? Everything we do involves forecasts about how the future will unfold. Whether buying a new house or changing job, designing a new product or getting married, our decisions our governed by implicit predictions of how things are likely to turn out. The problem is, we're not very good at it. In a landmark, 20-year study, Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed that even the average expert was only slightly better at predicting the future than random guesswork. Tetlock's latest project - an unprecedented, government-funded forecasting tournament involving over a million individual predictions - has since shown that there are, however, some people with real, demonstrable foresight. These are ordinary people, from former ballroom dancers to retired computer programmers, who are nonetheless able to predict the future with a 60 per cent greater degree of accuracy than regular forecasters. They are superforecasters. In Superforecasting, Tetlock and his co-author Dan Gardner offer a fascinating insight into what we can learn from this elite group of people. They show the methods used by these superforecasters which enable them to outperform even professional intelligence analysts with access to classified data. And they offer practical advice on how we can all use these methods for our own benefit - whether in business, in international affairs, or in everyday life.