Please mark your calendars and plan to attend the C4I Seminar Series on 
Friday, Jan 10, from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm in the Engineering Building, 
room 4705. Dr. Kenneth C. Olson discusses "Probabilistic Coherence 
Weighting for Improving Expert Forecasts." For further information 
contact Deb Schenaker, (703) 993-3682, email: [log in to unmask], or 
visit our website c4i.gmu.edu.

*ABSTRACT*

Methods for eliciting and aggregating expert judgment are necessary when 
decision-relevant data are scarce. This presentation addresses how 
multiple related individual judgments can be used to improve aggregation 
of probabilities for a binary event across a set of judges. The work 
extends previous efforts that use probabilistic incoherence of an 
individual's subjective probability judgments to weight and aggregate 
the judgments of multiple forecasters for the goal of increasing the 
accuracy of forecasts. Data from two studies demonstrate good practice 
for eliciting extra probability judgments that allow adjustment of the 
judgments and assignment of weights to the judgments. The methods result 
in improvement of more than 30% over the established benchmark of a 
simple, equal-weighted averaging of judgments.

*SPEAKER INFORMATION*

Kenneth C. Olson is a research assistant professor in the Volgenau 
School of Engineering at George Mason University.He earned his Ph.D. in 
quantitative psychology from The Ohio State University and completed a 
fellowship with the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research 
Fellowship Program. He is most knowledgeable about social, cognitive, 
and motor processes in decision making and has extensive experience 
educating both the public and professionals on common judgment errors. 
His teaching and research provide statistical modeling tools to 
non-statisticians, including work to develop a structured analytic 
technique to implement Bayesian networks for intelligence assessments.In 
2013 he joined the Center of Excellence in C4I as a core researcher in a 
federally funded research project called SciCast to develop methods for 
improving the accuracy of science forecasts.

-- 
Debra J. Schenaker
C4I Center Admin, MSN 4B5
Volgenau School of Engineering
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA  22030
(703) 993-3682 (p)
(703) 993-1706 (f)
[log in to unmask]