Archive for the tag 'Forecasting'
FAMOUS SCIENTIST TO ROBIN “HIGH IQ” HANSON: Science, which is a very long-term endeavor, does not need your stickin’ idea about scoreable predictions and track records. Please, go back to minding economic issues in your Ivory Tower, and let us run science our way, on our timing. Thanks. Appreciated.
Chris F. Masse August 12th, 2008
I don’t really think the comparison with sports/business/weather forecasters really holds up, for a prosaic reason — in particle physics, the timescale for experiments is years and decades, not days. There is no way to efficiently grade/reward people on the accuracy of their predictions, and correspondingly no real incentive for anyone to make very quantitative predictions.
On the other hand, it’s not as if there is no incentive to be right. If you devote your life to working out the ramifications of low-energy supersymmetry and it’s not there, you won’t get fired (if you have tenure), but on the other hand your life’s work will be useless. Which is a pretty big incentive.
Posted by: Sean Carroll [from Cosmic Variance] | August 11, 2008 at 12:25 PM
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Sean, I don’t understand the relevance of the timescale to the efficient grading of predictions. Given enough forecasts we can see a signal of accuracy above the noise of luck in individual forecasts. I agree that the longer the timescale the weaker are incentives from any given reward tied to scoring. But I’m not really focused on incentives in this post - I’m focused on whether it is reasonable for folks to crow about being vindicated when they weren’t willing to make scoreable forecasts.
Posted by: Robin Hanson | August 11, 2008 at 12:35 PM
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Scientists don’t want to make scoreable forecasts.
Hence, it is impossible to collect track records.
Robin Hanson’s idea has no application —over than vanity blogging.
Let’s go back to our prediction markets (where traders work, for free, as info collectors).
Let’s not waste our precious time on fruitless ideas.
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Track Record Collecting vs. Prediction Markets
Chris F. Masse August 10th, 2008
Robin Hanson’s false good idea: collecting track records.
But his post is the living proof that he is wrong:
- Prediction markets incentivize traders in researching issues (reading the experts’ works), making probability bets, and delivering a collective verdict;
- Experts don’t like to state publicly their home-made probabilistic predictions —as his post shows.
And if experts are not used to express scoreable forecasts, then, by essence, you can’t collect anything. Hence, the superiority of the prediction market method.
Another false good idea from Robin Hanson.
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Prediction Markets within the Forecasting Community
Chris F. Masse June 14th, 2008
I have downloaded the final program schedule (PDF file) of the 28th International Symposium on Forecasting, and browsed thru all the paper abstracts that will be presented. Wow. There are dozens and dozens.. many one hundred or two… It took me a while to get to the bottom of that file.
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I saw 3 or 4 papers on prediction markets (or “betting markets”).
I spotted some names I know. 
Besides Andreas, who will be at Nice for the symposium?
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The field of prediction markets can be seen as a sub-set of the forecasting community. However, browsing the forecasting paper abstracts, I came up with the idea that we are competitors of all those guys / gals. We propose a process by which traders (like bees) go out there and gather all bits of information (sometimes coming from those forecasting experts), and a market mechanism delivers a collective verdict about what’s going to happen. One can set up a prediction market, and skips the reading of those forecasting experts’ reports —let the incentivized traders do the work. In that perspective, the prediction market process is both more meta than the forecasting methods and also a competitor of them.
Why bother reading all those forecasting experts’ reports when we can read the prediction markets?
Convenience, convenience, convenience.
Time is money. Let the incentivized traders do the time-consuming work.
And we get the honey.
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Psstt… Spot that comment, on Google News, about… “bellwethers”… from a political scientist.
Chris F. Masse June 13th, 2008
Spot in passing the mention of our… “high-stakes, casino-style prediction markets”…
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Suffolk University - Political Research Center
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Predictify is about building track records of human predictors.
Chris F. Masse June 10th, 2008
Robert Scoble interviews their CTO.
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Predictify is not a prediction exchange. We think prediction markets are superior to polls and surveys, don’t we?
With Predictify, the mechanism delivering the collective verdict is simplistic: it’s a poll —with possibility to get down to each individual answer.
Their conversation is very interesting, nevertheless —in great part due to Robert Scoble’s intense curiosity.
Technically, the video is awesome and plays well —even with my old computer and slow DSL line. Kudos to the Fast Company techies.
UPDATE: I don’t like that their video starts off automatically, though. With YouTube, we decide to play the video —it is not imposed on us.
UPDATE: Alas, their embedded video does not go into the blog feed. 
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UPDATE: I e-mailed my remarks to Robert Scoble, and he’s asked to his techie to look into the issues.
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UPDATE: I see that the video does not start on its own, now. They managed to correct that. Rest the fact that their videos don’t go into feeds.
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NewsFutures’ hyper marketese on their prediction market consultancy and software package for enterprise prediction markets
Chris F. Masse June 10th, 2008
Top-10 reasons why NewsFutures is the ideal partner to harness the wisdom of your crowd
1.) Integrated Solutions
We offer complete solutions, not just great software. This approach delivers a much higher success rate and enables the client organization to fully consider Prediction Markets as a key decision-support tool.
From experience, we know that a successful prediction market project requires a lot more than great software or a cool website. Above all:
- Featuring strategic and well-defined questions;
- Securing a high participation rate;
- Integrating the market into the management and decision-making processes.
- Our project management checklist covers 30+ task components of market design, market implementation, and market administration. To ensure success, NewsFutures offers hands-on management and best-practice advice at every stage, in close contact with the client-side team. And if the client is willing to handle some of those tasks itself, we make sure to transfer the relevant knowledge and skills.
2.) A suite of powerful tools
Our platform offers a full suite of knowledge aggregation tools that are optimized for various forecasting needs and business contexts: prediction markets, and more, much more.
As an early pioneer in the field of enterprise prediction markets, NewsFutures has been among the first to recognize not only the power of this tool, but also its various practical limits in certain situations. We are experienced enough to recognize when other knowledge aggregation mechanisms may offer more practical or productive solutions.
That’s why, in close collaboration with some of our clients (in particular InterContinental Hotels, Eli Lilly, Arcelor Mittal, and Pfizer), we have developed a suite of innovative software tools that enable us to optimally aggregate predictions in a variety of business contexts. All of these tools are currently fielded with various clients.
Our software platform currently includes:
Prediction Markets. A continuous double auction trading engine (with optional market maker) is particularly appropriate for measuring risks and opportunities as event probabilities. It can also be used to forecast continuous variables.
Competitive Forecasting. Designed for collective forecasting of specific business variables, such as quarterly sales, especially under several conditional scenarios, or with a small pool of participants.
Idea Pageant. Ideal for rapid harvesting and filtering of a large number of new ideas that require evaluation and prioritization.
Impact Matrix. Used to collect and gauge the likelihood and business impact of various events in the very long term.
This versatile set of tools enables us to propose and implement the most effective solution in every case.
3.) World-Class Expertise
NewsFutures has the longest record of implementing enterprise prediction markets, the most extensive enterprise client list, and the widest geographical reach.
Our team has been immersed in every aspect of delivering successful enterprise prediction markets since 2002. We have implemented internal markets and external markets of all shapes, durations and sizes, around the world: U.S.A., Brasil, France, U.K., Germany, Holland, Japan, Hong Kong, and as far as New Zealand. We have built the longest-running continuous client relationship in the industry (servicing Eli Lilly since 2003).
Our methodology and technological solutions have been shaped by this rich history of confrontation with reality. We know that implementing a successful enterprise prediction market requires clear goals, significant resources, constant care and monitoring, and we know what it takes to deliver success. No other team is more seasoned.
«NewsFutures has done some of the most innovative work in the area for longer than most. They were in there making it happen for real while others were clueless on the fringes.»
- Ajit Kambil - Gobal Director, Deloitte Research
Notably, we have also built our eponymous public prediction exchange into one of the best known play-money exchanges. The experience of running this market non-stop since the year 2000 gave us deep insights into what it takes to successfully manage a market for the long run.
4.) Creative leadership
NewsFutures is a thought leader and a creative driving force within the industry.
NewsFutures started implementing prediction markets in 2000, years before the buzz words “wisdom of crowds” and “web 2.0″ even surfaced in the brains of James Surowiecki and Tim O’Reilly - and we’ve been at the forefront of innovation ever since: Over the years, we’ve fielded several innovative tools for harvesting the wisdom of crowds in various enterprise contexts, and we even applied for a pending patent on a multi-outcome continuous double auction (CDA) trading engine.
In 2003, NewsFutures led the first field study comparing real-money and play-money markets, publishing the results in a landmark article co-authored with some of the field’s leading academic researchers: Prediction Markets: Does Money Matter? - Electronic Markets, 14 (3), September 2004. This research significantly enhanced the credibility of play-money markets and, as a result, boosted their adoption within enterprise contexts.
In 2007, NewsFutures started experimenting with an innovative business model for real-money public prediction markets: Bet2Give.
NewsFutures work has been covered on television by CBS News (here) and CNBC (here), and in print by prestigious publications in the United States and Europe, including James Surowiecki’s international best-seller The Wisdom of Crowds.
Our CEO, Emile Servan-Schreiber, has lectured on the topic all over the world, including at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the Wharton Business School.
In recognition of NewsFutures’ practical and throught leadership, Emile was chosen to chair the new Prediction Market Industry Association. He is also an associate editor of the Journal of Prediction Markets.
5.) Customized solutions
Our software platform is customization-friendly, enabling us to tailor our solutions to a client’s special needs.
When dealing with high-end demanding customers, one size cannot fit all. The NewsFutures philosophy is to tailor a market solution to the problem at hand, rather than force-fit the problem to a pre-existing market template. That usually means, in addition to choosing the most appropriate tool and market design, customizing the user interface to optimize the integration with the client’s IT infrastructure and the navigation among various markets.
It also means being responsive to customer requests for additional features that extend the platform’s capabilities, and sometimes even developing completely new tools. (Indeed, this is how we came to develop and integrate into the platform a whole suite of original tools in addition to prediction markets.)
In contrast to the one-size-fits-all market and navigation templates provided by others, the NewsFutures software platform offers the flexibility needed to address the unique needs of demanding customers.
6.) Industrial-strength software
NewsFutures software satisfies the highest professional standards and demanding environments.
Internet giant Yahoo!, who knows a thing or two about quality software, chose to acquire the source code of our prediction market engine to power its own Yahoo! Tech Buzz Game.
Our platform is so reliable that it has been used to operate high-stakes real-money political markets for Holland’s leading daily de Volkskrant (see this report), and we currently use it to operate our own real-money prediction exchange Bet2Give.
7.) Military-grade security and confidentiality
We offer a range of access, backup, encryption, integration and hosting options that satisfies the most demanding customers.
NewsFutures has been vetted by customers who put a premium on data security and confidentiality, such as the U.S. Military, pharmaceutical clients, and others in the super-competitive IT industry.
While most clients are satisfied to host their applications on our servers, located in a high-security facility, others have had us ship fully configured hardware that they can install behind their own firewall, or had us install the prediction market application directly on one of their own servers within their existing IT infrastructure.
8.) Multilingual applications
In a global world, English is not enough.
Our software platform is designed to operate in multi-language mode, with a user interface that can offer several languages simultaneously. English, French, Dutch and German versions are already implemented. Other languages can easily be added on request. This feature is important for multinational companies that want to tap the collective intelligence of a linguistically diverse population.
9.) Round-the-clock support
Present on two continents, NewsFutures offers rapid response across many time-zones.
The NewsFutures enterprise team operates the world over from New Jersey, USA, and Paris, France. This enables rapid response in many different time zones and continuous availability from 08:00 to 01:00 GMT. We are currently servicing clients in the United States (from coast to coast), France, Holland, and as far as New Zealand. Our multi-cultural team is well suited to operate in a global world while being attuned to the importance of local differences.
10.) Team players
Although NewsFutures is equiped to deliver integrated solutions, we also have significant experience in partnering with consultancies to service their clients.
We find such partnerships rewarding and productive, and we are very comfortable with them, especially because they help implant the solutions deeper into the host organization. Over the years, we have teamed up with consultancies large and small. Among the largest are SAIC (on a U.S. Military project), Accenture (on a MIT Technology Review project), and the RAND Corporation (on a Texas DOT project).
If you are a consultancy and you would like to deliver wisdom of crowds solutions to your clients, please contact us for details of our partnership program.
PREDICTION MARKETS HAVE ARRIVED: Bloomberg columnist shames India’s government FOR NOT USING prediction markets to forecast demand.
Chris F. Masse June 2nd, 2008
WOW. This is big.
[...] Finally, demand estimation is too important to be left entirely to experts.
Companies such as Google Inc. are harnessing the power of prediction markets — which gather information from a large number of participants — to generate useful forecasts.
There’s no reason why governments can’t do the same.
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Great idea.
Let’s shame the 95% of Fortune-500 companies for not using enterprise prediction markets.
- Shame on you, McDonald’s, for not using enterprise prediction markets.
- Shame on you, Nike, for not using enterprise prediction markets.
- Shame on you, Conquest Capital, for not using enterprise prediction markets.
- etc. etc. etc.
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Prediction Markets: A new Special Interest Group on forecastingprinciples.com
Andreas Graefe May 12th, 2008
The marketsforforecasting.com Special Interest Group provides a resource for researchers and practitioners who are interested in the field of prediction markets.
In keeping with the objectives of forecastingprinciples.com, this SIG will present research findings that support evidence-based principles. In particular, the site covers research that provides guidelines, prescriptions, rules, conditions, action statements, or advice about what to do in given situations.
The current site is a beta-version. To further develop the content, we ask for your contributions!
The material for this special interest group is maintained by Andreas Graefe. Please contact him for further information, and with corrections, additions, or suggestions for these pages.
