Philip E. Tetlock is the Annenberg University Professor at
the University of Pennsylvania and holds appointments in the
psychology and political science departments and the Wharton School
of Business. He and his wife, Barbara Mellers, are the co-leaders
of the Good Judgment Project, a multi-year forecasting study. He is
also the author of Expert Political Judgment and (with Aaron
Belkin) Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics.
Dan Gardner is a New York Times bestselling
author, speaker, and consultant. His three books on psychology and
decision-making—published in 25 countries and 19 languages—have
been praised by everyone from The Economist to Nobel
laureate Daniel Kahneman. Prior to becoming an author, Gardner was
a newspaper columnist, talking head, and investigative journalist
who won or was nominated for every major award in Canadian
newspaper journalism. He is an honorary senior fellow at the
University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public Policy and
International Affairs and lives in Ottawa, Canada.
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Washington Post Bestseller
A Hudson Booksellers Best Business Interest Book of 2015
Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of
the Year Award
Winner of the Axiom Business Book Award in Business Theory (Gold
Medal)
“A top choice [for best book of 2015] among the world’s biggest
names in finance and economics... Eurasia Group founder Ian
Bremmer, Deutsche Bank Chief U.S. Economist Joe LaVorgna, and
Citigroup Vice Chairman Peter Orszag were among those giving it a
thumbs-up.”
—Bloomberg Business
“The material in Superforecasting is new, and includes a compendium
of best practices for prediction… The accuracy that ordinary people
regularly attained through their meticulous application did amaze
me… [It offers] us all an opportunity to understand and react more
intelligently to the confusing world around us.”
—New York Times Book Review
"Tetlock's thesis is that politics and human affairs are not
inscrutable mysteries. Instead, they are a bit like weather
forecasting, where short-term predictions are possible and
reasonably accurate... The techniques and habits of mind set out in
this book are a gift to anyone who has to think about what the
future might bring. In other words, to everyone."
—The Economist
"Tetlock’s work is fascinating and important, and he and Gardner
have written it up here with verve."
—The Financial Times
“Superforecasting is the most important scientific study I’ve ever
read on prediction.”
—Cass R. Sunstein, The Bloomberg View
"Just as modern medicine began when a farsighted few began to
collect data and keep track of outcomes, to trust objective
'scoring' over their own intuitions, it's time now for similar
demands to be made of the experts who lead public opinion. It's
time for evidence-based forecasting."
—The Washington Post
"Superforecasting, by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, is one of the
most interesting business and finance books published in 2015.”
—John Kay, The Financial Times
"One of Tetlock's key points is that these aren't innate skills:
they can be both taught and learned... Tetlock's 'Ten Commandments
For Aspiring Superforecasters' should probably have a place of
honor in most business meeting rooms."
—Forbes
"The key to becoming a better forecaster, if not a super one,
according to Tetlock is the same as any other endeavor: practice,
practice, practice."
—The Street
"In this captivating book, Tetlock argues that success is all about
the approach: foresight is not a gift but rather a product of a
particular way of thinking... In each chapter, the author augments
his research with compelling interviews, anecdotes, and historical
context, using accessible real-world examples to frame what could
otherwise be dense subject matter. His writing is so engaging and
his argument so tantalizing, readers will quickly be drawn into the
challenge - in the appendix, the author provides a concise training
manual to do just that. A must-read field guide for the
intellectually curious."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred
"Tetlock and Gardner believe anyone can improve their forecasting
ability by learning from the way they work. If that's true, people
in business and finance who make an effort to do so have a lot to
gain — and those who don't, much to lose."
—The Financial Post
"Superforecasting is a very good book. In fact it is essential
reading — which I have never said in any of my previous
MT reviews... It should be on every manager's and investor's
reading list around the topics du jour of decision-making,
prediction and behavioural economics."
—Management Today
"I've been hard on social science, even suggesting that 'social
science' is an oxymoron. I noted, however, that social science has
enormous potential, especially when it combines 'rigorous
empiricism with a resistance to absolute answers.' The work of
Philip Tetlock possesses these qualities."
—Scientific American
"One of the best books I've read this year... Superforecasting is a
must read book."
—Seeking Alpha
"Keen to show that not all forecasting is a flop, Tetlock has
conducted a new experiment that shows how you can make good
forecasts, ones that routinely improve on predictions made by even
the most well-informed expert. The book is full of excellent
advice — it is the best thing I have read on predictions,
which is a subject I am keen on... Gardner has turned the research
into readable examples and a flowing text, without losing rigour...
This book shows that you can be better at forecasting."
—The Times of London
"We now expect every medicine to be tested before it is used. We
ought to expect that everybody who aspires to high office is
trained to understand why they are so likely to make mistakes
forecasting complex events... Politics is harder than physics but
Tetlock has shown that it doesn't have to be like astrology."
—The Spectator
“Philip Tetlock is the world expert on a vital
subject. Superforecasting is the wonderful story of how he and
his research team got ordinary people to beat experts in a very
serious game. It is also a manual for thinking clearly in an
uncertain world. Read it.”
—Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking,
Fast and Slow
“Superforecasting is a rare book that will make you smarter
and wiser. One of the giants of behavioral science reveals how to
improve at predicting the future.”
—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author
of Originals
“The best way to know if an idea is right is to see if it
predicts the future. But which ideas, which methods, which people
have a track record of non-obvious predictions vindicated by the
course of events? The answers will surprise you, and they have
radical implications for politics, policy, journalism, education,
and even epistemology—how we can best gain knowledge about the
world. The casual style of Superforecasting belies the
profundity of its message.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard
University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature
“Philip Tetlock’s Superforecasting is a common-sense
guide to thinking about decision-making and the future by a man who
knows this terrain like no one else.”
—Ian Bremmer, Bloomberg Business’ Best Books of 2015
“In this accessible and lively book, Tetlock and Gardner recognize
the centrality of probabilistic thinking to sound forecasting.
Whether you are a policymaker or anyone else who wants to approach
decisions with great rigor, Superforecasting will serve as a highly
useful guide.”
—Robert E. Rubin, Former U.S. Treasury Secretary
“How well can we predict the future, really? There is no better way
to answer that question than to read this book. You will come away
disillusioned about the ability of experts, but also enlightened
about how the best forecasters do it—and maybe even hopeful about
your own prospects.”
—Tyler Cowen, Director of the George Mason University Mercatus
Center and author of Average Is Over
“For thousands of years, people have listened to those who foretold
the future with confidence and little accountability. In this book,
Tetlock and Gardner free us from our foolishness. Full of great
stories and simple statistics, Superforecasting gives us a new way
of thinking about the complexity of the world, the limitations of
our minds, and why some people can consistently outpredict a
dart-throwing chimp. Tetlock’s research has the potential to
revolutionize foreign policy, economic policy, and your own
day-to-day decisions.”
—Jonathan Haidt, New York University Stern School of Business, and
author of The Righteous Mind
“[Superforecasting] shows that you can get information from a lot
of different sources. Knowledge is all around us and it doesn’t
have to come from the experts.”
—Joe LaVorgna, Bloomberg Business’ Best Books of 2015
“Good judgment and good forecasting are rare, but they turn out to
be made of teachable skills. By forcing forecasters to compete,
Tetlock discovered what the skills are and how they work, and this
book teaches the ability to any interested reader.”
—Stewart Brand, President, The Long Now Foundation
“Philip Tetlock is renowned for demonstrating that most experts are
no better than ‘dart-throwing monkeys’ at predicting elections,
wars, economic collapses and other events. In his brilliant new
book, Tetlock offers a much more hopeful message, based once again
on his own ground-breaking research. He shows that certain people
can forecast events with accuracy much better than chance—and so,
perhaps, can the rest of us, if we emulate the critical thinking of
these ‘superforecasters.’ The self-empowerment genre doesn’t get
any smarter and more sophisticated than this.”
—John Horgan, Director, Center for Science Writings, Stevens
Institute of Technology
“Superforecasting is the rare book that is both scholarly and
engaging. The lessons are scientific, compelling, and enormously
practical. Anyone who is in the forecasting business—and that’s all
of us—should drop what they are doing and read it.”
—Michael J. Mauboussin, Head of Global Financial Strategies, Credit
Suisse
“[Superforecasting] highlights the techniques and attributes of
superforecasters—that is, those whose predictions have been
demonstrated to be remarkably accurate—in a manner that’s both
rigorous and readable. The lessons are directly relevant to
business, finance, government, and politics.”
—Peter Orszag, Bloomberg Business’ Best Books of 2015
“There isn’t a social scientist in the world I admire more than
Phil Tetlock.”
—Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist
“From the Oracle of Delphi to medieval astrologers to modern
overconfident experts, forecasters have been either deluded or
fraudulent. For the first time, Superforecasting reveals the secret
of making honest, reliable, effective, useful judgments about the
future.”
—Aaron Brown, Chief Risk Officer of AQR Capital Management and
author of The Poker Face of Wall Street
“Socrates had the insight in ‘know thyself,’ Kahneman delivered the
science in Thinking, Fast and Slow, and now Tetlock has something
we can all apply in Superforecasting.”
—Juan Luis Perez, Global Head of UBS Group Research
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