| |
|
What will happen tomorrow, next week or next year? Nobody knows for sure, but that doesn't seem to stop us from trying to make predictions about all kinds of future events. From the weather to the stock market we all want to know what's going to happen before it happens. People, such as psychics, pollsters, economists, gamblers and many others, even make (or try to make) a living by predicting the future. Yet, none of these 'experts,' is ever right all or even most of the time. However, if you get a group of experts together and poll them, you will find that in most cases their collective wisdom turns out to be pretty accurate. The more people you ask the more likely the collective answer will be close to the actual result. Things such as political polls are relatively accurate because they ask a large enough sample of people about their intended action. Yet, there is an interesting and often more accurate way of predicting the future than experts, polls or even psychics. These are called prediction markets. Essentially, a prediction market is a market where you use real or virtual money to predict the outcome of a future event. The types of events can range from sports to entertainment to politics. When you guess a future outcome correctly you make money and if you guess wrong you lose money. The predictive power of prediction markets lies in the fact that you have many people placing money on what they think will happen. With a large enough group of people these results very closely mirror the actual outcomes. To put it more simply a prediction market is a collection of people who are all putting their money where their mouth is. There are a few big difference between betting in prediction markets and other forms of gambling such as betting on horse races. The biggest difference is that in a prediction market you can both buy and sell a given event. You don't simply have to be an odds taker but you can be an odds maker as well. Also, overall you should get better odds since you are trading with other people rather than betting against a bookie or casino. Finally, prediction markets are different from regular casino and sports based gambling or even the stock market because of the topics covered. Popular subjects include politics, weather, current events in addition to regular business and sports based predications. Almost anything can be included in a prediction market. The following pages elaborate on different topic areas covered by prediction markets: 2008 Presidential Election Prediction 2008 Economic Predictions 2008 World Predictions 2008 Weather Predictions |