Victor Ponta is still the prime-minister of Romania, Tariq al-Hashimi is still sentenced to death and the Free Syrian Army did not gain control of Aleppo yet.

We closed our questions 239, 267 and 292 with the status-quo (option No or Event will not occur before November 1st).

Analysis of the Predictions

For question 267, the evolution of the market is shown in the picture below. We will be posting the Brier Score on this question shortly.

The Brier Score (Brier 1950) is a measurement of the accuracy of probabilistic predictions. As a distance metric, lower is the better.  The Brier Score ranges from 0..2, and is the sum of the squared differences between the forecast and the outcome averaged over the number of forecasts.  On a binary (Yes/No) question, simply guessing 50% all the time yields a “no courage” score of 0.5.  We want to be firmly below 0.1.

Here are some comments from the participants:

This is tough; they just announced a major offensive that has been going on for the last few days. But, the question may not even be about the Free Syrian Army anymore. The opposition fighting Assad has grown very fractured along ideological lines, and receiving support is based largely on recognition and media coverage.

Rebels reportedly took out one of Assad’s army fighter jets recently which they say is a big blow to Assad, because they now have the capability to institute a no fly zone without international support. If the rebels claim is true, it could be a great victory for the FSA, but I still don’t think any control would be gained by November 1. Assad’s air power is still fearsome, although it is true there are steady defections, and morale is low among his ground troops. Whoever rules the air, rules.

The binomial questions 239 (Ponta, on the left) and 292 (Iraq, on the right) were closed with the Brier Scores of 0.029 and 0.018 respectively. In this case, the market performed well and the Brier Scores are close to our targeted value.

The fugitive Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi has been convicted on a second charged of involvement in a plot to assassinate a senior Interior Ministry official. Ponta has been the Prime-Minister of Romania since May 2012.

Related Questions: Check out our other questions with respect to elections in Eastern Europe, Syria or Iraq: 220, 314, 139, 218, 230 or 218!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amended: Here is the Brier Score for question 267:

In this case the market did ok, but not as well as the previous binary questions. One reason might be the fact that this was a multichoice question, that there was not enough evidence or that there is currently high instability in the area.