How to Be Less Terrible at Predicting the Future

Season 5, Episode 39

This week on Freakonomics Radio, experts and pundits are notoriously bad at forecasting, in part because they aren’t punished for bad predictions. Also, they tend to be deeply unscientific. The psychologist Philip Tetlock is finally turning prediction into a science — and now even you could become a superforecaster.

Plus, a lottery-linked savings account might do wonders for our sad savings rate. The Gates Foundation pledged $500 million to a cause that seems quite different from typical problems like disease, famine or illiteracy. That $500 million is going to help poor people learn to save money.

To learn more, check out the podcasts from which this hour was drawn: “How to Be Less Terrible at Predicting the Future” and “Is America Ready for a No-Lose Lottery?”

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