PRT: Predict, Resolve & Tally

57 lines of code which allow you to make predictions, resolve, and tally them. It plays rough with the user. Name inspired by PRT (Worm).

Example of use

Open a terminal, with Ctrl+Alt+T

The command predict creates a new prediction:

$ predict
> Statement: Before 1 July 2020 will SpaceX launch its first crewed mission into orbit?
> Probability (%): 50
> Date of resolution (year/month/day): 2020/07/01

The command resolve resolves all predictions whose dates have passed.

$ resolve
Before 10 April 2020 will former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont return to Spain? (2020/04/10)
> (TRUE/FALSE) TRUE

The command tally tallies how you did for all resolved predictions.

$ tally
0 to 10 : 0 TRUE and 10 FALSE
10 to 20 : 0 TRUE and 5 FALSE
20 to 30 : 1 TRUE and 3 FALSE
30 to 40 : 2 TRUE and 7 FALSE
40 to 50 : 10 TRUE and 11 FALSE
50 to 60 : 10 TRUE and 10 FALSE
60 to 70 : 7 TRUE and 0 FALSE
70 to 80 : 10 TRUE and 2 FALSE
80 to 90 : 10 TRUE and 1 FALSE
90 to 100 : 1 TRUE and 0 FALSE

Installation

1. Add the following to your .bashrc

Add the following at the end of your .bashrc file, where filePathWay is the location of the PRT file, so that you can use the predict, resolve and tally commands from any terminal. Lines which start with # are comments.

[ -f /filePathWay/PRT ] && . /filePathWay/PRT

For example:

[ -f /home/nuno/Documents/PRT ] && . /home/nuno/Documents/PRT

Google "where is my .bashrc file stackoverflow" if you don't know where your bash file is.

2. Change the directory.

Change the first 3 lines so that the program uses the directory of your choice. For example, in my system they might be:

pendingPredictions=/home/nuno/Documents/Forecasting/pendingPredictions.txt
pendingPredictionsTemp="${pendingPredictions}.t"
resolvedPredictions=/home/nuno/Documents/Forecasting/resolvedPredictions.txt

Gotchas

• CSV: Statements, predictions and probabilities are saved, internally, as a csv file. This means that you can choose between:
  • Not using commas in your statements
  • Modifying the program so that it becomes more complicated, but suits your needs better
• Dates: Dates are in the year/month/day format, so that they can be compared alphanumerically as strings. That is, an earlier date, in this format, would come earlier in a dictionary than a later date.
  • 2020/7/1 is not a valid date, because it would come after 2020/10/01. Write dates using two digits for both month and dates, like: 2020/07/01.
  • Alternatively, write a date parser to suit your needs. It's not difficult, but it's very annoying.
• Bash
  • This program runs in bash shells, common in Unix systems.
• Windows & Mac
  • You can install bash for Windows (I like the distribution in git for Windows). See also these two stackoverflow answers.
• The tally function is really simple; it only accepts predictions with 1% granularity, and it aggregates them with 10% granularity. It might become more complicated in the future.