SciCasters are following the ESA’s International Rosetta Mission and counting down the days of the much-anticipated landing of the Philae on a periodic comet known as Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The latest news from ESA states that it will deploy the Philae to the comet on November 12. http://bit.ly/1DQEAcy
The HPV questions have resolved. There were 52 questions (one for each state) plus six cluster questions and one question about the nation (see trends graph below).
The state questions asked, “What will be the 2013 estimated vaccination coverage of HPV for females aged 13-17 in the state of <State name>.”
State HPV vaccination likely is dependent on the cluster to which the state belongs. We asked forecasters to help to fill in the conditional probability forecasts by using the “Related Forecasts” section after a forecast on the cluster question. Continue reading
The question, A young paraplegic Brazilian, assisted by a neurorobotic exoskeleton, will take the ceremonial first kick at the 2014 World Cup in São Paulo, Brazil. How far will the ball travel? has resolved as “Between 1-3 meters”. Our Brier score was 0.326, better than uniform.
There were 275 forecasts made by 53 unique users. Did you make a forecast? If so, login and check your dashboard.
Also, check out the epic comment stream on this popular SciCast question. Continue reading
Reposted with permission from SciCast forecaster Jay Kominek. You can find his blog, hypercomplex.net here.
I’m going to assume you’re familiar with SciCast; if you aren’t, that link is the place to start. Or maybe Wikipedia.
There has been a open question on SciCast, “Will Bluefin-21 locate the black box from Malaysian Airlines flight MH-370?”, since mid-April. (If you don’t know what MH370 is, I envy you.) It dropped fairly quickly to predicting that there was a 10% chance of Bluefin-21 locating MH370. Early on, that was reasonable enough. There was evidence pings from the black box had been detected in the region, so the entire Indian Ocean had been narrowed down to a relatively small area.
Unfortunately weeks passed and on May 29th Bluefin-21’s mission was completed, unsuccessfully. Bluefin-21 then stopped looking. At this point, I (and others) expected the forecast to plummet. But folks kept pushing it back up. In fact I count about 5 or 6 distinct individuals who moved the probability up after completion of the mission. There are perfectly good reasons related to the nature of the prediction market for some of those adjustments.
I’m interested in the bad reasons.
The question, Will the FDA approve a new small molecule antibiotic before 1 January 2016? has resolved as Yes, with a Brier score of 0.30, better than the baseline 0.50. Did you make a forecast? If so, login and check your dashboard. For more information, view this post on the FDA web site. Continue reading
The question, What West African country will be third to detect the Ebola Virus in 2014 after Guinea and Liberia? has resolved as Sierra Leone, with a Brier score of 0.87, slightly better than baseline 0.93. For more information, view this post on the CDC web site. Continue reading
The question, What percent of managed honey bee colonies in the US will be lost during the 2013-2014 winter? has resolved as “Between 21% and 25%,” with a Brier score of 0.31, notably worse than the baseline of 0.21. There were 252 forecasts by 73 users.
For more information on the resolution, view this post on Bee Informed. Continue reading
The Great Lakes questions have resolved.
Lake Ontario
What will be the peak mean ice concentration in Lake Ontario during the 2013/2014 winter? has resolved as “56% or greater”. Data from NOAA coastal watch indicates Lake Ontario ice concentration hit 61.52%.
Analysis of the Predictions
Our raw market Brier Score (before smoothing or adjustments) was .75.
The question, Will bitcoin be accepted at online retailer, Amazon, by March 31, 2014? has resolved “False/No” because bitcoin has NOT been accepted by online retailer, Amazon. However, for information on how to use bitcoin to shop on Amazon (via digital gift card purchase) view this Forbes article.
Analysis of the Predictions
Our raw market Brier Score1 (before smoothing or adjustments) was 0.02.
The Brier Score (Brier 1950) is a measurement of the accuracy of probabilistic predictions. As a distance metric, a lower score is better than a higher score. The market Brier Score ranges from 0 to 2, and is the sum of the squared differences between the individual forecasts and the outcome weighted by how long the forecasts were on the market. On a binary (Yes/No) question, simply guessing 50% all the time yields a “no courage” score of 0.5.
There were 214 forecasts made by 86 unique users.
There were 12 participants’ comments. Here are a few:
Apple recently moved to remove iOS apps that handle bitcoin, apparently to avoid legal issues related to bitcoin’s current ambiguous legality. I would not think Amazon would move in the opposite direction by March 31.
More woes for Bitcoin: Bitcoin Trading Technology In Question As Currency Dives After Glitch
It is still too early for bitcoin. It will take at least another 4 or 5 years for a company of size or a country to accept bitcoin. Changes in currency, let alone international, having in many cases required more than decades to make decisions regarding changes which result in acceptance. How many years did it take the Euro?
I don’t see the Euro as a great comparison point. At this stage, Bitcoin isn’t trying to replace another currency, even if that’s what some of its more ardent supporters see as its endgame. For this question to resolve as true, there doesn’t need to be any massive shift in public policy. Amazon doesn’t need to stop accepting dollars. It just needs to do what overstock.com did.
Check out these related forecasting questions that are still active on the market.
Did you like this post? Follow us on Twitter.
1. The Ordered Brier is officially known as RPS.
The forecast question “How many billions of pounds of almond meat will be harvested in California in 2013?” has been resolved and is closed for additional forecasts. The most popular answer was a bit too low (1.80-1.89). The answer was 1.92 billion pounds.
The USDA’s NASS ‘Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2012 Annual Summary’ was not published as originally scheduled due to the U.S. federal government’s 2013 budget sequestration. Although the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) has issued its annual almond summary in January nearly every year, this year we should not expect the ‘Noncitrus Fruits and Nuts 2013 Annual Summary’ until July.
Therefore, we decided to use the summary statistics of the Almond Board to settle this question. The twelve months of numbers for 2013 in the last table of the Almond Board report sum to about 1.92 billion pounds.
The Official SciCast Blog 