Predicting the future can be problematic, so the intelligence agency charged with investing in high-risk, high-payoff research wants industry to come up with a better way.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, in a broad agency announcement released June 30, says it will award four years contracts to organizations who come up with a quantitative method for weighing forecasters' judgments according to their "level of risk aversion, cognitive style, variance in judgment, past performance, and predictions of other forecasters' knowledge." It calls the effort Aggregative Contingent Estimation.

Research has already shown that mathematically aggregating many independently-made predictions is a more reliable guide to the future an independent forecast, the announcement states. But mathematically characterizing the abilities of forecasters and using that as a variable when aggregating independent judgments would lead to even more accurate predictions, according to the announcement.

For more:
- go to the solicitation materials on FBO.gov
- see the IARPA webpage on the BAA
- learn "How Tarot Cards Work"
- email your future self

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