If you’ve ever seen an ad for an investment product, you’ve heard the phrase “past performance does not guarantee future results.” Because of course, it doesn’t. But that doesn’t stop businesses, governments, organizations and individuals from trying to predict the future. In an effort to improve our odds, a government research agency — the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)– has been sponsoring annual competitions among university teams to devise better ways to measure and improve the art of forecasting world events. Wharton marketing professor Barbara Mellers has been leading one of those teams — one that won the competition three years straight. In this interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Mellers discusses her team’s findings, what makes some people better prognosticators, and how the best forecasters can be given a boost.
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