What happened in forecasting in March 2020

Prediction platforms.

• Foretold has two communities on Active Coronavirus Infections and general questions on COVID.
• Metaculus brings us the The Li Wenliang prize series for forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as the Lockdown series and many other pandemic questions
• PredictIt: The odds of Trump winning the 2020 elections remain at a pretty constant 50%, oscillating between 45% and 57%.
• The Good Judgment Project has a selection of interesting questions, which aren’t available unless one is a participant. A sample below (crowd forecast in parenthesis):
  • Will the UN declare that a famine exists in any part of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, or Uganda in 2020? (60%)
  • In its January 2021 World Economic Outlook report, by how much will the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate the global economy grew in 2020? (Less than 1.5%: 94%, Between 1.5% and 2.0%, inclusive: 4%)
  • Before 1 July 2020, will SpaceX launch its first crewed mission into orbit? (22%)
  • Before 1 January 2021, will the Council of the European Union request the consent of the European Parliament to conclude a European Union-United Kingdom trade agreement? (25%)
  • Will Benjamin Netanyahu cease to be the prime minister of Israel before 1 January 2021? (50%)
  • Before 1 January 2021, will there be a lethal confrontation between the national military or law enforcement forces of Iran and Saudi Arabia either in Iran or at sea? (20%)
  • Before 1 January 2021, will a United States Supreme Court seat be vacated? (No: 55%, Yes, and a replacement Justice will be confirmed by the Senate before 1 January 2021: 25%, Yes, but no replacement Justice will be confirmed by the Senate before 1 January 2021: 20%)
  • Will the United States experience at least one quarter of negative real GDP growth in 2020? (75%)
  • Who will win the 2020 United States presidential election? (The Republican Party nominee: 50%, The Democratic Party nominee: 50%, Another candidate: 0%)
  • Before 1 January 2021, will there be a lethal confrontation between the national military forces of Iran and the United States either in Iran or at sea? (20%)
  • Will Nicolas Maduro cease to be president of Venezuela before 1 June 2020? (10%)
  • When will the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) next screen two million or more travelers in a single day? (Not before 1 September 2020: 66%, Between 1 August 2020 and 31 August 2020: 17%, Between 1 July 2020 and 31 July 2020: 11%, Between 1 June 2020 and 30 June 2020: 4%, Before 1 June 2020: 2%)

Misc.

• The Brookings institution, on Forecasting energy futures amid the coronavirus outbreak
• The European Statistical Service is “a partnership between Eurostat and national statistical institutes or other national authorities in each European Union (EU) Member State responsible for developing, producing and disseminating European statistics”. In this time of need, the ESS brings us inane information, like “consumer prices increased by 0.1% in March in Switzerland”.
• Famine: The famine early warning system gives emergency and crisis warnings for East Africa.
• COVID: Everyone and their mother have been trying to predict the future of COVID. One such initiative is Epidemic forecasting, which uses inputs from the above mentioned prediction platforms.
• On LessWrong, Assessing Kurzweil’s 1999 predictions for 2019; I expect an accuracy of between 30% and 40%, based on my own investigatiobns but find the idea of crowdsourcing the assessment rather interesting.