Share <Embed>

Buy New

$28.87

List Price: $35.00
Save: $6.13 (18%)

FREE Shipping.

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Want it Thursday, Oct. 20? Order within and choose Two-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$26.53

FREE Shipping

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by Amazon Warehouse Deals

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Trade in your item
Get a $3.87
Gift Card.

Trade in
Learn More

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Paperback – August 20, 2006

by Philip E. Tetlock (Author)

37 customer reviews

See all 5 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$20.09

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$59.16

$19.85

Paperback

"Please retry"

$28.87

$19.35

$11.52

Audible, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

The intelligence failures surrounding the invasion of Iraq dramatically illustrate the necessity of developing standards for evaluating expert opinion. This book fills that need. Here, Philip E. Tetlock explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events, and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.

Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat.

Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making.

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

$28.87 FREE Shipping. In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Total price: $56.98

Buy the selected items together

This item:Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? by Philip E. Tetlock Paperback $28.87
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping. Details
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock Hardcover $19.04
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Paperback $9.07
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
FREE Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Philip E. Tetlock

220

Hardcover
$19.04
Philip E. Tetlock

220

Paperback
$10.89
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

1,136

in Developmental Biology
Paperback
$15.02
Daniel Kahneman

2,327

in Medical Applied Psychology
Paperback
$9.07
Paul Pierson

3

Paperback
$28.21
Michael J. Mauboussin

54

Hardcover
$17.23

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Save Big On Open-Box & Pre-owned: Buy "Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can...” from Amazon Warehouse Deals and save 24% off the $35.00 list price. Product is eligible for Amazon's 30-day returns policy and Prime or FREE Shipping. See all Open-Box & Pre-owned offers from Amazon Warehouse Deals.

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition (August 20, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691128715
ISBN-13: 978-0691128719
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #131,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #174 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Elections & Political Process > General
- #361 in Books > Medical Books > Psychology > Social Psychology & Interactions
- #532 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Social Psychology & Interactions

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		70%
4 star		19%
3 star		0%
2 star		3%
1 star		8%

Write a customer review

See all 37 customer reviews

Top Customer Reviews

A classic of Political Science & Cognitive Psychology

ByDr. Frank Stechon January 5, 2007

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Tetlock shows conclusively two key points: First, the best experts in making political estimates and forecasts are no more accurate than fairly simple mathematical models of their estimative processes. This is yet another confirmation of what Robyn Dawes termed "the robust beauty of simple linear models." The inability of human experts to out-perform models based on their expertise has been demonstrated in over one hundred fields of expertise over fifty years of research; one of the most robust findings in social science. Political experts are no exception.

Secondly, Tetlock demonstrates that experts who know something about a number of related topics (foxes) predict better than experts who know a great deal about one thing (hedgehogs). Generalist knowledge adds to accuracy.

Tetlock's survey of this research is clear, crisp, and compelling. His work has direct application to world affairs. For example he is presenting his findings to a conference of Intelligence Community leaders next week (Jan 2007) at the invitation of the Director of National Intelligence.

"Expert Political Judgment" is recommended to anyone who depends on political experts, which is pretty much all of us. Tetlock helps the non-experts to know more about what the experts know, how they know it, and how much good it does them in making predictions.

22 comments 51 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Careful, Plodding, Objective

ByPeter McCluskeyon September 22, 2006

Format: Paperback

This book is a rather dry description of good research into the forecasting abilities of people who are regarded as political experts. It is unusually fair and unbiased.

His most important finding about what distinguishes the worst from the not-so-bad is that those on the hedgehog end of Isaiah Berlin's spectrum (who derive predictions from a single grand vision) are wrong more often than those near the fox end (who use many different ideas). He convinced me that that finding is approximately right, but leaves me with questions.

Does the correlation persist at the fox end of the spectrum, or do the most fox-like subjects show some diminished accuracy?

How do we reconcile his evidence that humans with more complex thinking do better than simplistic humans, but simple autoregressive models beat all humans? That seems to suggest there's something imperfect in using the hedgehog-fox spectrum. Maybe a better spectrum would use evidence on how much data influences their worldviews?

Another interesting finding is that optimists tend to be more accurate than pessimists. I'd like to know how broad a set of domains this applies to. It certainly doesn't apply to predicting software shipment dates. Does it apply mainly to domains where experts depend on media attention?

To what extent can different ways of selecting experts change the results? Tetlock probably chose subjects that resemble those who most people regard as experts, but there must be ways of selecting experts which produce better forecasts. It seems unlikely they can match <a href="[...]">prediction markets</a>, but there are situations where we probably can't avoid relying on experts.

He doesn't document his results as thoroughly as I would like (even though he's thorough enough to be tedious in places):

I can't find his definition of extremists. Is it those who predict the most change from the status quo? Or the farthest from the average forecast?

His description of how he measured the hedgehog-fox spectrum has a good deal of quantitative evidence, but not quite enough for me check where I would be on that spectrum.

How does he produce a numerical timeseries for his autoregressive models? It's not hard to guess for inflation, but for the end of apartheid I'm rather uncertain.

Here's one quote that says a lot about his results:

Beyond a stark minimum, subject matter expertise in world politics translates less into forecasting accuracy than it does into overconfidence

0Comment 37 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Great Decision Making Evidence

ByT. Coyneon March 10, 2006

Format: Hardcover

As both a consultant and an investment manager I have spent a lot of years studying decision theory. One limitation in a lot of the work I encountered was its heavy reliance on lab studies using students. You were never quite sure if the conclusions applied in the "real world." This outstanding book puts that concern to rest. It is by far the richest body of evidence I have encountered on decision making in real world situations. Anybody interested in decision making and decision theory will profit from reading it.

0Comment 17 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Excellent Book

Thank you Philip for writing such a powerful book. Thank you for showing that what so called experts are generally no better than ordinary citizens at predicting political events.Read more

Published 7 months ago by Ninos Youkhana

A social sciences masterpiece

I have read Tetlock’s works in reverse chronological order. I first read Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, and read this book afterwards.Read more

Published 9 months ago by Abacus

Hilariously dated

The book opens with a full throated defense of the American invasion of Iraq and how doves who pine for a counterfactual reality where Saddam is still in power discount the...Read more

Published 1 year ago by d

Four Stars

good

Published 1 year ago by Maribeth Madonna

Five Stars

This books information is fascinating and challenging to read and absorb.

Published 1 year ago by nick s

Great book.

Published 1 year ago by FlowerGirl

Four Stars

Hard to handle the statistical sections but the basic message is fascinating. Go Foxes.

Published on September 18, 2014 by harrison young

Brilliant

Brilliant research written up in a clear fashion. Important work that is quoted widely. Important implications for society and our politics

Published on March 2, 2014 by David McKay

Awesome

We all think about the world and everything else in terms of our mental models. This has its own limitations, but used properly we will still be able to understand and predict the...Read more

Published on February 24, 2014 by Vinayagamoorthy

The education establishment promotes teaching "critical thinking", but does not know what that means

This book is excellent at demonstrating that *expertise* should be the goal of education, and not "critical thinking".Read more

Published on October 8, 2013 by W Stephens

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

Set up a giveaway

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Paperback

Philip E. Tetlock

220

$10.89
Thinking, Fast and Slow Paperback

Daniel Kahneman

2,327

$9.07
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't Paperback

Nate Silver

1,045

$13.50
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics Paperback

Richard H. Thaler

209

$10.06

Pages with Related Products. See and discover other items: causal inference

Conditions of Use
Privacy Notice
Interest-Based Ads

6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Rare Books & Textbooks	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web	Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	AmazonFresh Groceries & More Right To Your Door

AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Handpicked Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Inspire Free Digital Educational Resources	Amazon Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services	Audible Download Audio Books

BeautyBar.com Prestige Beauty Delivered	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Casa.com Kitchen, Storage & Everything Home	ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics	CreateSpace Indie Print Publishing Made Easy	Diapers.com Everything But The Baby

DPReview Digital Photography	East Dane Designer Men's Fashion	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Junglee.com Shop Online in India

Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital Publishing Made Easy	Prime Now FREE 2-Hour Delivery on Everyday Items	Prime Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Soap.com Health, Beauty & Home Essentials	TenMarks.com Math Activities for Kids & Schools

Wag.com Everything For Your Pet	Warehouse Deals Open-Box Discounts	Whispercast Discover & Distribute Digital Content	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Yoyo.com A Happy Place To Shop For Toys	Zappos Shoes & Clothing

Buy New $28.87

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

or

or

Buy Used $26.53

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Paperback – August 20, 2006

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Product Details

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Most Recent Customer Reviews

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

Buy New

$28.87

Buy Used

$26.53