Writer’s note: You're receiving this email because you signed up for our newsletter The Prediction Game. We’ll be sending out an update on the game next week, but in between updates, we’re exploring different methods of predicting the future, from the methodical to the mystical. 

Chance or Skill? 

I’m not one to brag, but I consider myself to be particularly good at rock, paper, scissors. 

That may seem like a ridiculous statement to those who consider rock, paper, scissors to be a game purely based on chance. After the countdown of “rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” you randomly throw down one of those three options, and your opponent does the same. But is your choice truly random? Is theirs? After enough rounds, can you begin to detect a pattern in the choices your opponent makes? For example, after each round where you both throw down the same choice (paper meets paper) are they more likely to stick to that same choice again in the next round or are they more likely to switch to the choice that beats it (scissors beat paper)? When you start to understand the people playing the game—how they think, how the past affects their decisions—etc. you can find patterns that turn what looks like a game of chance into a game of skill.

But maybe this isn't just limited to rock, paper, scissors. Maybe, if we get really good at analyzing the past and present we can get really good at predicting the future in lots of situations. What previously looked like random happenstance, suddenly becomes explainable—even predictable.

Take The Prediction Game for example. Is it a game of skill or a game of chance? To answer that question, let’s look at the purest example of a game of chance: playing the lottery. The lottery is an exercise in predicting the future that entirely comes down to chance. There is nothing you can do, no data to analyze or research to complete, that would increase your chances of selecting the right combination of random numbers. The Prediction Game, on the other hand, is a fairly different proposition. Or at least that’s the hypothesis that Wharton Professor Dr. Philip Tetlock has been researching for the better part of 3 decades. (Note: Everything we’re sharing here comes from Tetlock’s excellent book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. This article is certainly no replacement for reading the book, and we highly recommend that you do. We don’t receive any affiliate revenue from this, we just think it’s a really great book and that you should support your local bookstores these days.)