ACX
A thread through the archive
calibration
Essays tagged “calibration”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Essays on calibration
23 essaysACX
Congrats To Polymarket, But I Still Think They Were Mispriced
Scott Alexander praises Polymarket's election success but argues their Trump odds were mispriced, explaining why Trump's win doesn't significantly validate their numbers over other forecasters.
20 min read 2,993 words
ACX
Mantic Monday 1/30/2023
Scott Alexander discusses recent developments in prediction markets and forecasting, including Metaculus' milestone, PredictIt's legal issues, and various prediction market topics.
31 min read 4,760 words
ACX
Absurdity Bias, Neom Edition
Scott Alexander examines the use of absurdity arguments, reflecting on his critique of Neom and offering strategies to balance absurdity heuristics with careful reasoning.
13 min read 1,990 words
ACX
Grading My 2021 Predictions
Scott Alexander evaluates his 2021 predictions, analyzing his performance across various confidence levels and comparing his results to other forecasters and prediction markets.
11 min read 1,559 words
ACX
2020 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander evaluates his 2020 predictions, finding he was generally overconfident, and discusses the implications for his prediction-making process.
13 min read 1,892 words
SSC
2019 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander reviews and analyzes his 2019 predictions, finding he was generally well-calibrated but slightly underconfident across all confidence levels.
12 min read 1,769 words
SSC
2018 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander evaluates his 2018 predictions, analyzing his accuracy and discussing factors that affected his performance.
12 min read 1,852 words
SSC
2017 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander evaluates his 2017 predictions, analyzing his accuracy and calibration across different confidence levels.
14 min read 2,077 words
SSC
2016 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander evaluates his 2016 predictions, finding good overall calibration with slight underconfidence at 70% probability, consistent with previous years.
11 min read 1,634 words
SSC
2015 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander evaluates the accuracy of his 2015 predictions, finding overall good calibration and considering it a successful year.
7 min read 991 words
SSC
On Overconfidence
Scott Alexander discusses the problem of overconfidence in probability estimates, arguing that extreme certainty is rarely justified, especially for complex future predictions.
30 min read 4,625 words
SSC
The General Factor Of Correctness
Scott Alexander explores the possibility of a 'General Factor of Correctness' and its implications for rationality and decision-making across various fields.
18 min read 2,739 words
SSC
(Late) Predictions for 2015
Scott Alexander makes belated predictions for 2015, covering world events and personal life with varying confidence levels.
4 min read 615 words
LW
2014 Survey Results
Scott presents the results of the 2014 Less Wrong survey covering demographics, beliefs, community participation, and various psychological measures from 1503 respondents.
32 min read 4,809 words
SSC
2014 Predictions: Calibration Results
Scott Alexander evaluates his 2014 predictions, finding himself well-calibrated across various confidence levels, and jokingly declares himself trustworthy on all matters.
7 min read 974 words
LW
2013 Survey Results
Scott Alexander presents comprehensive results from the 2013 Less Wrong community survey, covering demographics, beliefs, and behavioral patterns of 1636 respondents.
38 min read 5,884 words
LW
2012 Survey Results
Scott presents comprehensive results from the 2012 Less Wrong Survey of 1195 respondents, covering demographics, beliefs, IQ measures, and a concerning calibration test showing poor performance at avoiding overconfidence bias.
35 min read 5,419 words
LW
2011 Survey Results
Scott Alexander presents comprehensive results from the 2011 Less Wrong survey of 1090 respondents, covering demographics, beliefs, probability estimates on various topics, and a calibration test that shows the community performs better than average but has some calibration issues.
16 min read 2,383 words
LW
Calibrate your self-assessments
Scott discusses how people's subjective self-assessments are often miscalibrated, using his own exam experiences and research on physical attractiveness and likeability to argue for replacing internal feelings with objective external measurements.
14 min read 2,050 words
LW
Looking for information on scoring calibration
Scott asks whether there's an accepted method for measuring calibration separately from domain knowledge, noting that common scoring rules conflate the two.
2 min read 221 words
LW
Techniques for probability estimates
Scott describes six techniques for translating vague probability feelings into accurate numerical estimates, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each method.
13 min read 1,936 words
LW
Shut Up And Guess
Scott calculates that on exams penalizing wrong answers at half the reward for correct ones, guessing always has positive expected value, but none of his intelligent classmates would accept this logic despite clear explanations.
11 min read 1,700 words