JoshuaZ comments on 1001 PredictionBook Nights - Less Wrong

51 Post author: gwern 08 October 2011 04:04PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 October 2011 11:01:05PM 0 points [-]

Kinda surprising to me that you can beat dumb luck in inaccuracy.

It shouldn't be. Assume that your pundits in general do no better than chance. In a large sample, some of them are going to have to have to do really badly. Even if your pool on average is better than chance one should still expect a few much worse.

That said, even given that, -8.7 by their metric looks really badly.

According to that study, being a lawyer by training was one of the things that caused predictors to do badly. Note that Cal Thomas doesn't fall into that category.