There was an article in NPR a while back about the Good Judgment Project (which was run by Dr. Tetlock - mentioned in the article). In some cases, betting/prediction markets (& other similar tools) were beating intelligence analysts - http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/04/02/297839429/-...
I participated in GJP for a couple seasons. Honestly, I didn't do that well.
But I was approaching it very differently than I would if it was my job. Since the system that was set up gave high rewards to unpopular predictions, I just gambled on the few most unpopular that had at least some shot at reversing. It wasn't the smartest approach, but it was the most fun. If I was doing it for real, obviously I'd go a different way.
The people who did best, at least from what I saw, tended to ride waves of popularity on the more active questions, buying low and selling high.
What I did was like betting on a few biotech startups, what the best scorers did was like riding waves of the market leading stocks.
In the end, I'm not that sure it had much to do with actual prediction of events. Then again, neither did my approach. I guess I'm not sold on the version of prediction markets they were using.
Kinda depends on which platform you were on (GJP used several). Some were prediction markets while some were opinion pools, both of which are scored/rewarded differently.
Our company (Cultivate Labs) recently acquired Inkling Markets (a very early YC company that built prediction market software) and have been building a new version of the PM platform, which will hopefully address some of the risk/reward quirks.
But I was approaching it very differently than I would if it was my job. Since the system that was set up gave high rewards to unpopular predictions, I just gambled on the few most unpopular that had at least some shot at reversing. It wasn't the smartest approach, but it was the most fun. If I was doing it for real, obviously I'd go a different way.
The people who did best, at least from what I saw, tended to ride waves of popularity on the more active questions, buying low and selling high.
What I did was like betting on a few biotech startups, what the best scorers did was like riding waves of the market leading stocks.
In the end, I'm not that sure it had much to do with actual prediction of events. Then again, neither did my approach. I guess I'm not sold on the version of prediction markets they were using.