Why you should use percentages, not words, to express probabilities.
Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia
Phil Tetlock, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied forecasting in depth, suggests that “vague verbiage gives you political safety.” ❧
This result is consistent with analysis by the data science team at Quora, a site where users ask and answer questions. That team found that women use uncertain words and phrases more often than men do, even when they are just as confident. ❧
A large literature shows that we tend to be overconfident in our judgments. ❧
The best forecasters make lots of precise forecasts and keep track of their performance with a metric such as a Brier score. ❧
