Jakob Zeitler
  • Blog
  • Causality
  • About
  • Portfolio

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Book review)

6/19/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
I just finished reading “Superforecasting” by Philip Fetlock. He initiated the Good Judgement Project, “a multi-year study of the feasibility of improving the accuracy of probability judgments of high-stakes, real-world events”. The project came first in the forecasting challenge by the IARPA, a US intelligence community observer.


The book, in the first part, covers the results of the Good Judgement Project in an interesting not over-academic way. The conclusion of the project, at least from my perspective, is that you should never think binary and always in the Bayesian way. If you are familiar with Bayesian statistic, you will feel that the whole project will culminate in the Bayesian rule already after having the first ten pages. The participants of the forecasting project are described, what they do and what their results are. 


I thought it to be interesting that Fetlock never explicitly states that these participants are just building intuition based Bayesian models of the world which allows them to generate more fine grained forecasts. For me, the book basically summed up an understanding of the world I was familiar with before, but with different words and some empiric evidence. Very useful.


I very much appreciated the remarks in the last chapter about the limits of quantification. I want to cover these in my Bachelor thesis, so this book definitely will get a reference or two.


Overall, this book is a very good read and one more piece of a puzzle called uncertainty I am trying to solve. Recommend. Approx. 18 hours.
0 Comments
    Picture

    Jakob Zeitler

    There is no shortcut to happiness.

    Archives

    February 2020
    November 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    May 2018
    December 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All
    Clouds
    Computers
    Cooking
    Face Recognition
    Food
    Life
    Microsoft
    Music
    Open Source
    Project Oxford
    Python
    Raspberry Pi
    Sports
    Talks

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.