IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0250935.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How well did experts and laypeople forecast the size of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel Recchia
  • Alexandra L J Freeman
  • David Spiegelhalter

Abstract

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social and traditional media have disseminated predictions from experts and nonexperts about its expected magnitude. How accurate were the predictions of ‘experts’—individuals holding occupations or roles in subject-relevant fields, such as epidemiologists and statisticians—compared with those of the public? We conducted a survey in April 2020 of 140 UK experts and 2,086 UK laypersons; all were asked to make four quantitative predictions about the impact of COVID-19 by 31 Dec 2020. In addition to soliciting point estimates, we asked participants for lower and higher bounds of a range that they felt had a 75% chance of containing the true answer. Experts exhibited greater accuracy and calibration than laypersons, even when restricting the comparison to a subset of laypersons who scored in the top quartile on a numeracy test. Even so, experts substantially underestimated the ultimate extent of the pandemic, and the mean number of predictions for which the expert intervals contained the actual outcome was only 1.8 (out of 4), suggesting that experts should consider broadening the range of scenarios they consider plausible. Predictions of the public were even more inaccurate and poorly calibrated, suggesting that an important role remains for expert predictions as long as experts acknowledge their uncertainty.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel Recchia & Alexandra L J Freeman & David Spiegelhalter, 2021. "How well did experts and laypeople forecast the size of the COVID-19 pandemic?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-16, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0250935
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250935
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250935
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250935&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0250935?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ribeiro, Matheus Henrique Dal Molin & da Silva, Ramon Gomes & Mariani, Viviana Cocco & Coelho, Leandro dos Santos, 2020. "Short-term forecasting COVID-19 cumulative confirmed cases: Perspectives for Brazil," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    2. Sibel Eker, 2020. "Validity and usefulness of COVID-19 models," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-5, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hwang, Eunju, 2022. "Prediction intervals of the COVID-19 cases by HAR models with growth rates and vaccination rates in top eight affected countries: Bootstrap improvement," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    2. Masum, Mohammad & Masud, M.A. & Adnan, Muhaiminul Islam & Shahriar, Hossain & Kim, Sangil, 2022. "Comparative study of a mathematical epidemic model, statistical modeling, and deep learning for COVID-19 forecasting and management," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    3. Das, Saikat & Bose, Indranil & Sarkar, Uttam Kumar, 2023. "Predicting the outbreak of epidemics using a network-based approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(2), pages 819-831.
    4. Crokidakis, Nuno, 2020. "COVID-19 spreading in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Do the policies of social isolation really work?," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    5. Rastko Jovanović & Miloš Davidović & Ivan Lazović & Maja Jovanović & Milena Jovašević-Stojanović, 2021. "Modelling Voluntary General Population Vaccination Strategies during COVID-19 Outbreak: Influence of Disease Prevalence," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(12), pages 1-18, June.
    6. James, Nick & Menzies, Max, 2023. "Collective infectivity of the pandemic over time and association with vaccine coverage and economic development," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    7. Das, Ayan Kumar & Kalam, Sidra & Kumar, Chiranjeev & Sinha, Ditipriya, 2021. "TLCoV- An automated Covid-19 screening model using Transfer Learning from chest X-ray images," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    8. Alba Antequera & Daeria O. Lawson & Stephen G. Noorduyn & Omar Dewidar & Marc Avey & Zulfiqar A. Bhutta & Catherine Chamberlain & Holly Ellingwood & Damian Francis & Sarah Funnell & Elizabeth Ghogomu , 2021. "Improving Social Justice in COVID-19 Health Research: Interim Guidelines for Reporting Health Equity in Observational Studies," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-12, September.
    9. Jessica Weinkle, 2022. "An evaluation of North Carolina science advice on COVID-19 pandemic response," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-16, December.
    10. Lalmuanawma, Samuel & Hussain, Jamal & Chhakchhuak, Lalrinfela, 2020. "Applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence for Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic: A review," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    11. Iloanusi, Ogechukwu & Ross, Arun, 2021. "Leveraging weather data for forecasting cases-to-mortality rates due to COVID-19," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    12. Medeiros, Marcelo C. & Street, Alexandre & Valladão, Davi & Vasconcelos, Gabriel & Zilberman, Eduardo, 2022. "Short-term Covid-19 forecast for latecomers," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 467-488.
    13. Matheus Henrique Dal Molin Ribeiro & Stéfano Frizzo Stefenon & José Donizetti de Lima & Ademir Nied & Viviana Cocco Mariani & Leandro dos Santos Coelho, 2020. "Electricity Price Forecasting Based on Self-Adaptive Decomposition and Heterogeneous Ensemble Learning," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-22, October.
    14. Dalton Garcia Borges de Souza & Erivelton Antonio dos Santos & Francisco Tarcísio Alves Júnior & Mariá Cristina Vasconcelos Nascimento, 2021. "On Comparing Cross-Validated Forecasting Models with a Novel Fuzzy-TOPSIS Metric: A COVID-19 Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-25, December.
    15. Albert Zeyer, 2022. "Teaching Two-Eyed Seeing in Education for Sustainable Development: Inspirations from the Science|Environment|Health Pedagogy in Pandemic Times," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(10), pages 1-12, May.
    16. James, Nick & Menzies, Max & Chan, Jennifer, 2021. "Changes to the extreme and erratic behaviour of cryptocurrencies during COVID-19," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 565(C).
    17. James, Nick, 2021. "Dynamics, behaviours, and anomaly persistence in cryptocurrencies and equities surrounding COVID-19," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 570(C).
    18. Noor Alkhateeb & Farag Sallabi & Saad Harous & Mamoun Awad, 2022. "A Study on Predicting the Outbreak of COVID-19 in the United Arab Emirates: A Monte Carlo Simulation Approach," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(23), pages 1-17, November.
    19. Zeroual, Abdelhafid & Harrou, Fouzi & Dairi, Abdelkader & Sun, Ying, 2020. "Deep learning methods for forecasting COVID-19 time-Series data: A Comparative study," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    20. Çaparoğlu, Ömer Faruk & Ok, Yeşim & Tutam, Mahmut, 2021. "To restrict or not to restrict? Use of artificial neural network to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation policies: A case study of Turkey," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0250935. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.