Tag Archives: Surowiecki

Superforecasting

superforecastingimagesThis post is a look at the book by Philip E Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting– the Art and Science of Prediction.  Phil Tetlock is also the author of Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?   In Superforecasting Tetlock blends discussion of the largely popular literature on decision making and his long duration scientific work on the ability of experts and others to predict future events.

In Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Tetlock found that the average expert did little better than guessing.  He also found that some did better. In Superforecasting he discusses the study of those who did better and how they did it.

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Smart Mobs and Diverse Problem Solvers

smartmobsHoward Rheingold is the author of Smart Mobs -the Next Social Revolution, James Surowiecki is the author of The Wisdom of Crowds, and Scott Page is the author of The Difference -How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.  Scott Page ties them together in his prologue. Each of them looks in his own way at how diversity can help us make better decisions.  They all build on that fact of cultural evolution that it is great for each of us to make better judgments, but that for us to progress we need to make better decisions together.  I will probably look at Scott Page’s book separately at some point, but here, in his case,  I will look at a paper  that he wrote with a colleague, Lu Hong, “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers.”

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