Superforecasting

A landmark 2005 study by Wharton professor Philip E. Tetlock found that most expert forecasts barely beat chance, though some showed foresight. With coauthor Daniel Gardner, Tetlock asks what sets the few apart, drawing on the Good Judgment Project, a government-funded tournament where tens of thousands of volunteers forecast world events. The best, the superforecasters, outdid prediction markets and even analysts with classified data. Using cases from the Bay of Pigs to the raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout, plus interviews with David Petraeus and Robert Rubin, the authors show that good forecasting rests on varied evidence, probabilistic thinking, teamwork, keeping score and admitting error. Published in 2015, it was named one of the year's best books by The Economist.

Daniel Kahneman endorsed it, praising it as a rare book that leaves readers smarter and wiser and calling Tetlock one of the giants of behavioral science.