How to Make Better Forecasts and Decisions: Avoid Face-to-face Meetings

J. Scott Armstrong, University of Pennsylvania

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Reprinted from The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, Issue 5, Fall 2006, pages 3-15.
Publisher URL: http://ideas.repec.org/s/for/ijafaa.html

Abstract

When financial columnist James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds, he wished to explain the successes and failures of markets (an example of a "crowd") and to understand why the average opinion of a crowd is frequently more accurate than the opinions of most of its individual members. In this expanded review of the book, Scott Armstrong asks a question of immediate relevance to forecasters: Are the traditional face-to-face meetings an effective way to elicit forecasts from forecast crowds (i.e. teams)? Armstrong doesn’t believe so. Quite the contrary, he explains why he considers face-to-face meetings a detriment to good forecasting practice, and he proposes several alternatives that have been tried successfully.