Freddie Sayers

In an era when we have more information than ever before, we are remarkably bad at predicting events. For all the promise of ‘big data’, every shiny new piece of information is still interpreted by a human being - and we can’t help but interpret data in a way that reinforces our instincts. Brexit took the whole world by surprise, in perhaps the biggest mispricing of risk in modern history, with consequences that will be felt across the West for years to come. Why? Because the financial markets, the media, experts and even the political campaigns themselves interpreted the data to fit in with what they wanted to believe. More numbers doesn’t yet mean more wisdom.