Coaching practices for How to Get Unbiased Estimates
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Get Unbiased Estimates, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I build my estimate from my own optimistic story first and only glance at how long these things usually take at the very end as a sanity check
- I catch myself shaving down the estimate I’m about to present
- My guesses never seem to get any better because I make them, find out the real answer, and then just move on
- I land on a number and just go with it, never pausing to ask what’s the most it could possibly be or the least
- I tend to blurt out one confident-sounding number and act like it’s solid, when honestly I have no business being that sure
Practices that may help
- Anchor on the base rate before adding inside-view details
Start your forecast from the class median, then adjust — do not start from your narrative and adjust to the base rate.
Reference Class Forecasting - Distinguish cognitive optimism bias from strategic misrepresentation
Recognize that some forecast inflation is genuine bias and some is deliberate spin — they require different fixes.
Reference Class Forecasting - Track your estimates and calibrate
Compare your Fermi estimates to actual figures when you can, and use the gap to improve future estimates.
Fermi Estimation - Sanity-check against known extremes
Test your estimate against the clearly too-high and too-low bounds to calibrate your range.
Fermi Estimation - Estimate in ranges, not point estimates
Instead of "my estimate is 500," say "I think it is between 200 and 2000."
Fermi Estimation - Watch for anchoring
Recognize when an arbitrary first number is silently dragging your estimate.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable - Use structured team forecasting to aggregate diverse views
Combine independent estimates from multiple people before the group talks — aggregation beats any single expert.
Superforecasting - Reference class forecasting
Before estimating, look up how long similar past projects actually took — not how they felt.
The Planning Fallacy — Why Your Estimates Are Always Wrong - Practice confidence interval estimation
Estimate ranges for factual quantities and check how often the true value falls within your range.
Calibration Training - Actively seek disconfirming cases
When researching base rates, specifically look for cases where things went badly — failure cases are underrepresented in natural memory.
The Outside View
Related concerns
- Independent Estimates Aggregation
Combine independent estimates from multiple people before the group talks — aggregation beats any single expert.
Use structured team forecasting to aggregate diverse views
- Estimation Error Buffer
Test your estimate against the clearly too-high and too-low bounds to calibrate your range.
Sanity-check against known extremes
- How To Improve Estimation
Compare your Fermi estimates to actual figures when you can, and use the gap to improve future estimates.
Track your estimates and calibrate
- Bounds On Estimates
Test your estimate against the clearly too-high and too-low bounds to calibrate your range.
- Conservative Estimates
When uncertain, use a pessimistic estimate as your working assumption — not your best guess.
Estimate conservatively and act on the conservative number
- How To Estimate Anything
Test your estimate against the clearly too-high and too-low bounds to calibrate your range.
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