The United Kingdom is preparing to leave the European Union. Mainstream political parties are breaking down across the Continent. Separatist movements are on the rise. Is Europe careening toward a cliff, or are these just bumps in the road to a more integrated Continental bloc?
Superforecasting can help us decide which is the more likely answer. With a combination of innate talent, training, teamwork and predictive aggregation, Superforecasting teams like Good Judgment have developed a unique approach to intelligence analysis that relies on quantitative forecasts of discrete events to predict a broader outcome. As Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner have explained to Stratfor readers, and in their best-selling book Superforecasting, using numerical probabilities helps boost the accuracy, accountability and clarity of assessments. By contrast, the slippery "vague verbiage" of terms like "could" and "might" can signal a frustratingly wide array of possible outcomes. According to Stratfor Vice President of Strategic Analysis Rodger Baker, combining quantitative rigor with qualitative detail offers the best of both worlds, providing more meaning and context to numerical estimates.Previously on Superforecasting:
Good Judgment's Future of Europe Index, produced in conjunction with Stratfor's team of Europe analysts, is designed to strike that balance.
Clustering: Making More Rigorous and Relevant Forecasts
Figuring out the probability of a single distinct event is tough. But tackling bigger topics made up of many of those events is even more challenging, in part because of a problem researchers call the "rigor-relevance tradeoff."
Consider the question posed at the beginning of this column: What does the future look like for European unity? The subject is highly relevant to the decisions world leaders must make today, but crafting a clear, rigorous and testable question about it is nearly impossible. What does "unity" really mean? How would we determine its strength or weakness? What time frame are we trying to examine?
Narrowing down the details -- "Will Catalonia hold an independence referendum by the end of 2017?" -- yields a much more testable proposition. But in checking all the boxes required to form a rigorous question, narrow topics lose their relevance to policymakers trying to determine the stability of the entire Continent down the line.
Good Judgment has pioneered a methodology aimed at solving that problem. By carefully crafting interrelated questions about discrete events that, in combination, shed light on a broader topic, analysts can boost the relevance of their forecast without compromising its rigor. In a research study sponsored and validated by the U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity from 2011-2015, the Good Judgment team showed how to boost the accuracy of individual forecasts, outperforming the collective forecasts of intelligence analysts in the U.S. government by 30 percent. Since then, Superforecasters have refined and expanded their approach to evaluate emerging consumer trends, inform product development and understand the factors driving commodity markets.
Indexing: Spotting Early Warning Signs
While the outcome of Catalonia's independence referendum may not be decisive for the future of Europe as a whole, the fact that Catalan voters favored a split from Spain's central government signals greater stress on European unity. The same would be true if a region of the United Kingdom were to seek a similar plebiscite, for example, or if the European Council were to sanction Poland for controversial reforms to its judicial system....MUCH MORE
Credit Suisse's Mauboussin: "Sharpening Your Forecasting Skills"
Jason Zweig Interviews Wharton’s Philip Tetlock on How Forecasters Can Do Better
"Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction"
Edge Magazine's Master Class In Forecasting With Phillip Tetlock
Dec. 2012
"How To Win At Forecasting" (Philip Tetlock and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency)
Sept. 2013
Daniel Kahnman's Favorite Paper: "On the Psychology of Prediction"
June 2014
Elite Forecasters and The Best Way to Predict the Future
And many, many more. Use the 'search blog' box if interested.
