Corpus ID: 16065586

Why Quantitative Probability Assessments Are Empirically Justifiable in Foreign Policy Analysis

@inproceedings{Friedman2015WhyQP,
  title={Why Quantitative Probability Assessments Are Empirically Justifiable in Foreign Policy Analysis},
  author={J. Friedman and J. D. Baker and P. Tetlock and R. Zeckhauser},
  year={2015}
}
Aristotle counseled us to seek precision insofar as the nature of the subject permits. But how much is too much? This article provides the first systematic test of long-standing debates about how precisely foreign policy analysts can estimate probabilities. Using a data set of 888,328 forecasts drawn from a series of geopolitical forecasting tournaments, we demonstrate that qualitative probability assessments, including seven-step scales employed by U.S. intelligence analysts, systematically… Expand
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