Book Review: Rock Breaks Scissors by Poundstone

 http://www.amazon.com/Rock-Breaks-Scissors-Outguessing-Outwitting/dp/1491531185

This is the third book I have read recently that is about forecasting (see here and here for the previous two).

Poundstone did a pretty good job overall. The first chapter of the book is a general discussion on the human psychology of perceiving randomness. The following one half gives specific examples of how to outperform in various more light-hearted and trivial prediction exercises (e.g. multiple choice tests, rock-paper-scissors, passwords etc.), and the remaining one half does the same thing but with more serious topics (e.g. sports betting, web big data, stock market etc.).

Once again I'll try to distill the essence of the book here:

1. The human mind is handicapped in creating and detecting randomness
2. We can take advantage of the above in many situations for a statistically significant gain
3. In situations where randomness rules, the real pros do not care so much about views; they care more about odds

Book Review: Superforecasting by Tetlock and Gardner

The theme of this book is very similar to Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise. The first few chapters are worth reading, while as it drags on the final one-third of the book is less appealing, as it indulges in corny talks of team works etc.. The new ideas I got from this book, in addition to those already listed in the review above, include:

1. The use of Brier score for rating forecast, because 'good' forecast should be in probabilistic terms
2. As a corollary, one has to make enough forecasts in order to have a statistically significant score (=/= good score)
3. Update predictions as frequently as appropriate
4. There is a vicious cycle going on in the 'Mainstream' of our society: people are not aware of the importance/option to think probabilistic -> they crave for binary, determined answers -> the media are aware of this demand -> the media cultivate the guru/pundit culture -> the people get more addicted to this way of thinking

 All in all, it is not as readable a book as Silver's, but I would still recommend it to anyone who is serious about improving and understanding the art of forecasting.