forecasting newsletter

ea/ForecastingNewsletter/ForecastingNewsletter/April2020.md

@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+Whatever happened to forecasting? April 2020
+============================================
+
+## Prediction Markets & Forecasting platforms.
+
+Forecasters may now choose to forecast any of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Death, Famine, Pestilence and War.
+
+### Augur: [augur.net](https://www.augur.net/)
+Augur, the blockchain prediction market, will be undergoing its [first major update](https://www.augur.net/blog/augur-v2/).
+
+### Predict It: [predictit.org](https://www.predictit.org/)
+
+In PredictIt, the [world politics](https://www.predictit.org/markets/5/World) section...  
+- is [overconfident on a Scottish independence referendum](https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/6236/Will-Scottish-Parliament-call-for-an-independence-referendum-in-2020) (though read the fine print).
+- gives 16% to [Netanyahu leaving before the end of the year](https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/6238/Will-Benjamin-Netanyahu-be-prime-minister-of-Israel-on-Dec-31,-2020)
+- gives 63% to [Maduro remaining President of Venezuela before the end of the year](https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/6237/Will-Nicol%C3%A1s-Maduro-be-president-of-Venezuela-on-Dec-31,-2020). 
+
+The question on [which Asian/Pacific leaders will leave office next?](https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/6655/Which-of-these-8-Asian-Pacific-leaders-will-leave-office-next) also looks like it has a lot of free energy overestimating low probability events.
+ 
+### Replication Markets: [replicationmarkets.com](https://www.replicationmarkets.com)
+Replication markets add [two market-maker bots](https://www.replicationmarkets.com/index.php/2020/04/16/meet-the-bots/) and commence their 6th round. They also add a sleek new widget to visualize the price of shares better.
+
+### Coronavirus Information Markets: [coronainformationmarkets.com](https://coronainformationmarkets.com/)
+For those who want to put their money where their mouth is, there is now a prediction market for coronavirus related information. The number of questions is small, and the current trading volume is $8000.
+
+### Foretold: [foretold.io](https://www.foretold.io/)
+
+Foretold brings us:
+- Estimates of [Active Infections throughout the world](https://www.foretold.io/c/1dd5b83a-075c-4c9f-b896-3172ec899f26/n/b24ccfcf-cdb8-431a-8004-b6af372cce1a).  
+- A new [distribution builder](https://www.highlyspeculativeestimates.com/dist-builder). 
+
+### Metaculus: [metaculus.com](https://www.metaculus.com/)
+
+Metaculus brings us a series of tournaments and question series:
+- [The Ragnarök question series on terrible events](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--ragnarok)
+- [Pandemic and lockdown series](https://pandemic.metaculus.com/lockdown/)
+- [The Lightning Round Tournament: Comparing Metaculus Forecasters to Infectious Disease Experts](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4166/the-lightning-round-tournament-comparing-metaculus-forecasters-to-infectious-disease-experts/).
+- [Overview of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) forecasts](https://pandemic.metaculus.com/COVID-19/).
+- [The Salk Tournament for coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) Vaccine R&D](https://pandemic.metaculus.com/questions/4093/the-salk-tournament-for-coronavirus-sars-cov-2-vaccine-rd/). 
+- [Lockdown series: when will life return to normal-ish?](https://pandemic.metaculus.com/lockdown/)
+
+### Good Judgement Project: [gjopen.com](https://www.gjopen.com/)
+
+The GJP has their usual challenges, plus one on [the Coronavirus Outbreak](https://www.gjopen.com/challenges/43-coronavirus-outbreak), financed by the [Open Philantropy Project](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/global-catastrophic-risks/biosecurity/good-judgment-inc-covid-19-forecasting).
+
+Of the questions which have been added recently, the crowd [doesn't buy](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/1580-before-1-january-2021-will-tesla-release-an-autopilot-feature-designed-to-navigate-traffic-lights) that Tesla will release an autopilot feature to navigate traffic lights, despite announcements to the contrary. Further, the aggregate... 
+- is extremely confident that, [before 1 January 2021](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/1595-before-1-january-2021-will-the-russian-constitution-be-amended-to-allow-vladimir-putin-to-remain-president-after-his-current-term), the Russian constitution will be amended to allow Vladimir Putin to remain president after his current term.   
+- gives a lagging estimate of 50% on [Benjamin Netanyahu ceasing to be the prime minister of Israel before 1 January 2021](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/1498-will-benjamin-netanyahu-cease-to-be-the-prime-minister-of-israel-before-1-january-2021).  
+- and 10% for [Nicolás Maduro](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/1423-will-nicolas-maduro-cease-to-be-president-of-venezuela-before-1-june-2020).  
+- [forecasts famine](https://www.gjopen.com/questions/1559-will-the-un-declare-that-a-famine-exists-in-any-part-of-ethiopia-kenya-somalia-tanzania-or-uganda-in-2020) (70%).
+
+## In the News:
+-  [Forecasts in the time of coronavirus](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/08/1586350137000/Forecasts-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/): The Financial times runs into difficulties trying to estimate whether some companies are overvalued, because the stock value/earnings ratio, which is otherwise an useful tool, is going to infinity as earnings go to 0 during the pandemic.
+- [Predictions are hard, especially about the coronavirus](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/4/8/21210193/coronavirus-forecasting-models-predictions): Vox has a short and sweet article on the difficulties of prediction forecasting; of note is that epidemiology experts are not great predictors.
+- [Pandemic highlights problems with efficient-market hypothesis](https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/pandemic-highlights-problems-with-efficient-market-hypothesis,13776): a very rambly article by an Australian Newspaper. See also [this LW comment by Wei Dai](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jAixPHwn5bmSLXiMZ/open-and-welcome-thread-february-2020?commentId=a9YCk3ZtpQZCDqeqR#wAHCXmnywzfhoQT9c) and [this tweet](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1233174331133284353) from Eliezer Yudkowsky. See [here](https://www.ft.com/content/dbf88254-22af-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b) for a Financial Times take on the concept, from Jan 1st and thus untainted by coronavirus discussion.
+- [538: Why Forecasting COVID-19 Is Harder Than Forecasting Elections](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/politics-podcast-why-forecasting-covid-19-is-harder-than-forecasting-elections/)
+- [COVID-19: Forecasting with Slow and Fast Data](https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/april/covid-19-forecasting-slow-fast-data). A short and crisp overview by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis on lagging economic measurement instruments, which have historically been quite accurate, and on the faster instruments which are available right now. Highlight: "As of March 31, the WEI [a faster, weekly economic index] indicated that GDP would decline by 3.04% at an annualized rate in the first quarter, a much more sensible forecast than that which is currently indicated by the ENI (a lagging measure which predicts 2.26% *growth* on an annualized basis in the first quarter)".
+- [Decline in aircraft flights clips weather forecasters' wings](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/apr/09/decline-aircraft-flights-clips-weather-forecasters-wings-coronavirus): Coronavirus has led to reduction in number of aircraft sending data used in making forecasts.
+- [The World in 2020, as forecast by The Economist](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/04/10/the-world-in-2020-as-forecast-by-the-economist/). The Brookings institution looks back at forecasts for 2020 by *The Economist*.
+- [A failure, but not of prediction](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/); a SlateStarCodex Essay.
+- Mainstream mishmash: [The market might be forecasting a faster recovery than we expect](https://money.yahoo.com/the-market-might-be-forecasting-a-faster-recovery-than-we-expect-162533133.html). [IMF says the world will ‘very likely’ experience worst recession since the 1930s](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/imf-global-economy-to-contract-by-3percent-due-to-coronavirus.html). Forbes brings us this [terrible, terrible opinion piece](https://www.forbes.com/sites/josiecox/2020/04/14/life-work-after-covid-19-coronavirus-forecast-accuracy-brighter-future/#28732f74765b) which mentions Tetlock, goes on about how humans are terrible forecasters, and then predicts that there will be no social changes because of covid with extreme confidence.
+- [The Challenges of Forecasting the Spread and Mortality of COVID-19](https://www.heritage.org/public-health/report/the-challenges-forecasting-the-spread-and-mortality-covid-19). The Heritage foundation brings us a report with takeaways of particular interest to policymakers. It has great illustrations of how the overall mortality changes with different assumptions. Note that criticisms of and suggestions for the current US administration are worded kindly, as the Heritage Foundation is a conservative organization. 
+- [Why most COVID-19 forecasts were wrong](https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/why-most-covid-19-forecasts-were-wrong-20200415-p54k40). Financial review article suffers from hindsight bias.
+- [Banks are forecasting on gut instinct — just like the rest of us](https://www.ft.com/content/4b8108e5-b04c-4304-9f40-825076a4fed7). Financial Times article starts with "We all cling to the belief that somebody out there, somewhere, knows what the heck is going on. Someone — well-connected insider, evil mastermind — must hold the details on the coming market crash, the election in November, or when the messiah will return. In moments of crisis, this delusion tightens its grip," and it only gets better.
+
+## Miscellanea
+- [COVID-19 Projections](https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america): A really sleek US government coronavirus model. See [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QuzAwSTND6N4k7yNj/seemingly-popular-covid-19-model-is-obvious-nonsense) for criticism. See also: [Epidemic Forecasting](http://epidemicforecasting.org/).
+- [Atari, early](https://aiimpacts.org/atari-early/). "Deepmind announced that their Agent57 beats the ‘human baseline’ at all 57 Atari games usually used as a benchmark." 
+- [Assessing Kurzweil's 1999 predictions for 2019](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GhDfTAtRMxcTqAFmc/assessing-kurzweil-s-1999-predictions-for-2019). Kurzweil made on the order of 100 predictions for 2019 in his 1999 book *The Age of Spiritual Machines*. How did they fare? We'll find out, next month.
+- [Zvi on Evaluating Predictions in Hindsight](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BthNiWJDagLuf2LN2/evaluating-predictions-in-hindsight). A fun read. Of course, the dissing of Scott Alexander's prediction is fun to read, but I really want to see how a list of Zvi's predictions fares.
+- [The M5 competition is ongoing](https://www.kaggle.com/c/m5-forecasting-accuracy/data).
+- [Some MMA forecasting](https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2020/04/fantasy-fight-forecasting-ufc-welterweight-title-usman-masvidal-woodley-edwards). The analysis surprised me; it could well have been a comment in a GJOpen challenge.
+- An oldie related to the upcoming US elections: [Which Economic Indicators Best Predict Presidential Elections?](https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/which-economic-indicators-best-predict-presidential-elections/), from 2011's Nate Silver.
+- [Self-reported COVID-19 Symptoms Show Promise for Disease Forecasts](https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2020/april/self-reported-covid-19-symptoms-disease-forecasts.html). "Thus far, CMU is receiving about one million responses per week from Facebook users. Last week, almost 600,000 users of the Google Opinion Rewards and AdMob apps were answering another CMU survey each day."
+- [Lockdown Policy and Disease Eradication](https://www.isical.ac.in/~covid19/Modeling.html). Researchers in India hypothesize on what the optimal lockdown policy may be.
+- [Using a delay-adjusted case fatality ratio to estimate under-reporting](https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/severity/global_cfr_estimates.html). 

ea/ForecastingNewsletter/ForecastingNewsletter/March2020.md

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+What happened in forecasting in March 2020
+==========================================
+
+## Prediction platforms.
+- Foretold has two communities on [Active Coronavirus Infections](https://www.foretold.io/c/1dd5b83a-075c-4c9f-b896-3172ec899f26) and [general questions on COVID](https://www.foretold.io/c/c47c6bc8-2c9b-4a83-9583-d1ed80a40fa2).
+- Metaculus brings us the [The Li Wenliang prize series for forecasting the COVID-19 outbreak](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3667/the-li-wenliang-prize-series-for-forecasting-the-covid-19-outbreak/), as well as the [Lockdown series](https://pandemic.metaculus.com/lockdown/) and many other [pandemic questions](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--pandemics)
+- 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](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/04/03/forecasting-energy-futures-amid-the-coronavirus-outbreak/), 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](https://fews.net/) 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](http://epidemicforecasting.org/), which uses inputs from the above mentioned prediction platforms.
+- On LessWrong, [Assessing Kurzweil's 1999 predictions for 2019](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GhDfTAtRMxcTqAFmc/assessing-kurzweil-s-1999-predictions-for-2019); I expect an accuracy of between [30% and 40%](https://nunosempere.github.io/rat/KurzweilPredictionsForThe2010s.html), based on my own investigatiobns but find the idea of crowdsourcing the assessment rather interesting.

git_commands.md

@@ -12,3 +12,5 @@ Can output a pdf, search "markdown to pdf"
 
 https://www.browserling.com/tools/sha3-hash
 twitter.com/NunoSempere
+http://www.markdowntopdf.com/
+https://pinetools.com/add-text-each-line