Whenever a shocking event occurs we rush to find the wise few who saw it coming, anoint them oracles and ask them to reveal what will come next. It’s an understandable reaction to uncertainty. It’s also a failure of the elementary scepticism that we should possess. For big events like presidential elections, terrorist attacks and stock market crashes, the number of observers making forecasts is always large, with varied forecasts. In those circumstances, the mere fact that someone correctly predicted something means little. To take it as proof that the forecaster possesses deep insight and knows what’s coming next makes as much sense as asking today’s lottery winner to reveal next week’s winning numbers. When it comes to predictions and forecasting, the challenge is to separate the lucky from the skilled — that requires statistics. A big problem here is vague language. When some pundit says something "could" or "may" happen, they are quite literally saying it may or may not happen. ...
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