Forecasting Strategy
Prediction Markets Called Trump but Missed Lula
In 2024, prediction markets backed Donald Trump while the polls called a toss-up, and they were right. In Brazil, the same confidence has now backfired: hours before the October 25 runoff, Polymarket gave Senator Flávio Bolsonaro roughly 80% odds of unseating...
A Tinkerer’s Bot Beats Humans and Startups at Forecasting
For the first time, an AI has won the Metaculus Cup, a seasonal tournament in which hundreds of forecasters predict real-world events. In the round decided on September 5, other bots took second and fifth place, leaving humans third and fourth. The winning bot was...
Can Policymakers Trust Forecasters?
Who predicts the future best: seasoned domain experts, statistical models, or amateur forecasters? A research review by consultancy Arb finds that none of the three wins outright, but the rankings may still surprise you. Top "superforecasters" hold a modest but real...
Amateur Gamblers Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s at Their Own Game
Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket where anyone can bet real money on future events are proving surprisingly competitive with professional economists. A working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that over Kalshi's five-year existence,...
The Wall Street Man who saw the future
Adam Jonas, long known as one of Morgan Stanley’s most influential auto analysts, has taken on a striking new role: the bank’s first “global embodied AI strategist,” focused on robotics, autonomous vehicles, drones, and even flying cars. Jonas compares his research...
Following up on the revolution in weather forecasting: How Machine Learning might replace traditional weather models
Remember our article about new models by Google outperforming traditional weather models? Progress has been made since then: meet “Aardvark Weather,” a cutting-edge system built on machine learning (ML) that’s transforming how we predict the weather—potentially for...
Chatbots Beating Human Forecasters in Election Predictions
“No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs” – that’s a bold prediction by AI forecasting startup Aaru’s founder Cam Fink. The startup wants to revolutionize forecasting in every application of business- and everyday life. For now they...
Lichtman predicts Kamela Harris to win—will his “13-Keys to the Whitehouse” be wrong in 2024?
All large U.S. newspapers are coming out with opinion polls that try to give us a snapshot of who the U.S. electorate would vote for if the election were held today. Statisticians such as Nate Silver have tried to make election forecasts more accurate than individual...
Predicting Extraterrestrial Threats using AI
As on earth, there are also storms in space. While storms on earth are tangible, space storms are less evident as they consist of charged particles. The effects of these storms can be pleasant – geomagnetic storms are responsible for the northern lights – but can also...
Machine Learning in Retail Forecasting – Results from the M5 Competition
Accurately predicting sales data is a challenge all retail companies face. Especially in light of the vast availability of data and solutions to evaluate data, firms at the cutting-edge of forecasting technology can gain an invaluable competitive advantage. The...
Machine Learning Beats Statistical Models in Weather Forecasting
Especially in light of climate change, modelling medium-range (next 10 days) weather is becoming increasingly important. The current industry gold-standard is the High Resolution Forecast (HRES), produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts...
Blockchain Prediction Markets
Prediction markets and betting on a person’s believes about the future is not a phenomenon linked to the rise of the internet, but an activity dating back hundreds of years. The first confirmed accounts of such activities date back to 1503 when Italian merchants...