Probabilistic cross-impact matrix

An analytical approach to estimating the probabilities of a forecasted item in a set of forecasts. The approach results in adjustments of the probabilities of the forecasted items, in view of judgments concerning potential interactions among the forecasted items. The approach calls for the construction of a rectangular matrix composed of all of the forecasted items in the set. These items appear in both the rows and the columns. Judgments about the conditional probabilities are placed in the cells of the matrix: if the event on the row occurs how then does it affect the probability of the event in the column? With such a matrix it is possible to re-estimate the probabilities of the items contained in the set and to identify first-order causality and sensitivity to change of any of the items.