[extropy-chat] US election prediction markets failure

[Neil H.]

On 11/13/06, Brent Neal <brentn at freeshell.org> wrote:
> I wonder if it was really a failure to "predict a drastic change" or
> whether it was a problem with an ill-posed question.  The question
> that Orlowski used in his article was posed as something like "GOP
> retains Senate."   That's a binary proposition and one that we
> understand now (and I believe we understood before the election) to
> have been a very close thing.   I wonder if the question had been
> posed as "Number of Seats lost by GOP"  if the idea market would have
> given a more accurate result.

Intrade had a number of contracts for the number of seats gained by
the Democrats, although I'm not sure how to access their stats now
that the tickets have closed.

Also, I'm pretty sure the claim isn't that prediction markets are
somehow perfect psychics, just that they're better on average than
other methods.

-- Neil