About

Hello, my name’s Tolga. I’m a professional forecaster for the Swift Centre, INFER, and a Superforecaster at Good Judgment Inc. In these roles I provide accurate and well calibrated probability estimates of events occurring within a range of subjects, including: geopolitics, politics, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently, I have contributed to forecasts on Russia-Ukraine and the Monkeypox outbreak for the Swift Centre, and on long-term climate risk as part of a GJI project with the Forethought Foundation.

I’ve always liked trying to predict the future, but I never knew you could compete against others for accuracy until I learned of crowd forecasting in an article I read a couple of years ago. After forecasting over 100 questions on GJOpen on many different topics, and scoring in the top 0.6% of forecasters in each of the largest challenges of 2020 and 2021, I was offered and accepted the role as a professional Superforecaster at Good Judgment Inc, and began in December 2021.

I was born and raised in England, and then did my Bachelor’s in Mathematics at the University of St Andrews. As well as my forecasting, I’m also now finishing off a Master’s in Mathematics at the University of Bergen. Apart from general forecasting, the main area I am interested in is X-risk reduction.

Forecasts

A selection of forecasts which I have contributed to:
– 31/07/2023 - Swift Centre - The outlook after the mutiny
– 24/06/2023 - Swift Centre - Live forecasting: Wagner mutiny
– 04/04/2023 - Swift Centre - UK life expectancy forecasting
– 17/02/2023 - Swift Centre - Will bird flu be the next pandemic?
– 24/01/2023 - Samotsvety - Update to Samotsvety AGI timelines
– 03/11/2022 - Swift Centre - What happens if Russia uses a nuclear weapon?
– 13/10/2022 - Swift Centre - Under what circumstances would Russia use a nuclear weapon?
– 03/10/2022 - Samotsvety - Samotsvety Nuclear Risk update October 2022
– 14/09/2022 - Swift Centre - Can Biden win in 2024?
– 09/09/2022 - Samotsvety - Samotsvety’s AI risk forecasts
– 15/08/2022 - Good Judgment Inc - Superforecasting Long-Term Risks and Climate Change
– 09/08/2022 - Swift Centre - Monkeypox Outlook- Update
– 27/07/2022 - Swift Centre - What happens to Germany if Russia cuts off the gas this winter?
– 11/07/2022 - Swift Centre - Ukraine/Russia outlook
– 27/06/2022 - Swift Centre - Monkeypox: The outlook for 2022

Education

University of Bergen

Master’s degree, Computational and Applied Mathematics (currently in progress)

University of St Andrews

Bachelor of Science (Bsc), Mathematics