Today’s speaker was Paul Goodwin, the son of Sid Goodwin, our oldest member, and Paul gave a presentation entitled “How good are we at making predictions”.
Much of this revolved around using sound judgement rather than relying on detailed computer predictions, many of which do unfortunately prove to be disastrously incorrect, for example the predicted results of the Brexit referendum, meteorological forecasts for bad or good weather, and inept financial predictions. American intelligence agencies are notoriously apt to get things wrong!
Intuition, a gut feeling, is often just as able to make accurate predictions as detailed forecasts. Lay persons, who know little about a particular subject, can at least match and sometimes better, professional forecasters, simply because they recognise the people/places involved, and base their prediction on known facts about that person or place, rather than become involved in the minutiae of detail. Patterns of behaviour cannot be ignored, but in this regard, animals are better than humans at recognising random patterns. Human beings are programmed to recognise patterns which are not there, and then look to explain them.
Confident experts are the ones to be wary of; place more faith in those who are uncertain!
As our chairman is wont to say, “Tis is what it is”!