Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (2015) was co-authored by Good Judgment Project (GJP) co-leader Philip Tetlock and psychology and decision-making writer Dan Gardner. It continues on from Tetlock’s 2005 book Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, which analyzed predictions made by expert political scientists and concluded that such predictions were highly unreliable in their accuracy.

Superforecasting draws upon the work of the GJP, a multiyear forecasting study Tetlock co-launched in 2011 with Barbara Mellers. The GJP was funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), which is part of the American intelligence community. The GJP recruited 2,800 volunteers and asked them to estimate the probability that highly specific world events would occur. Working both as individuals and in teams, the volunteers used data, critical thinking, and methods of data aggregation to reach their predictions. Tetlock discovered that some volunteers vastly outperformed their peers, despite not being experts in the subject. He dubbed these gifted individuals “superforecasters” and set out to discover what distinguished their approaches to prediction. The book explores hedgehoglike and foxlike forecasting, whether forecasting is art or science, and the role that doubt can play in forecasting.