Works
- Words of Estimative Probability, Studies in Intelligence, 1964
In Thinking Tools
Known for
A Yale historian who led the CIA's Office of National Estimates from 1952 to 1967 and is called the father of intelligence analysis. He proposed tying words such as probable and almost certain to fixed ranges of odds, after finding that readers took the same phrase to mean very different chances.
Caveat: His scheme was not adopted in his time; estimative lexicons spread through the intelligence community only after 2005.