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Author Archives: Jessie Jury
SciCast Recruitment Announcement
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SciCast is running a new special! The most accurate forecasters during the special will receive Amazon Gift Cards:
• The top 15 participants will win $2250* to spend at Amazon.com
• The other 135 of the top 150 participants will win $225 to spend at Amazon.com
US Flu Forecast: Exploring links between national and regional level seasonal characteristics
For the flu forecasting challenge (https://scicast.org/flu) participants are required to predict several flu season characteristics, at national and at regional levels (10 HHS regions). For some of the required quantities — such as peak percentage influenza-like illness (ILI), and total seasonal ILI count — one may argue that national level values have some relationship with the regional level ones. Or, in other words participants may be led to believe that national level statistics can be obtained from regional level ones.
Who’s predicting the next big thing?
SciCast is comprised of more than 7,000 science and technology experts and enthusiasts from universities, the private sector and professional organizations such as AAAS, IEEE, and ACS. The SciCast team thought it would be fun to find out more about what motivates SciCasters to predict the next big thing.
Meet SciCaster Ted Sanders, 26, who resides in Stanford, CA and is pursuing his PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford University.
Q: How did you get involved as a SciCast participant?
I learned about SciCast when it evolved out of the DAGGRE project, which I had joined from reading Robin Hanson’s blog. However, I was not active on SciCast until recently, when SciCast announced gift card prizes and the College Bowl competition. My participation also stems from a desire to support the legalization of prediction markets in the United States.
Q: What do you find most interesting about SciCast?
We’ve been slimed!
In dramatic fashion, it looks like total victory for the slime molds over the human derived HL-60 leukemia cells! It must be a satisfying vindication for Dicty Nation as they celebrate a billion years of evolutionary perfection for amoeba-hood everywhere over the upstart human cancer cell challengers. No love lost for these little human mutants though - good riddance.
Upsets brewing at the Dictys!
New video lifts the podium hopes of three teams: #11 (Faix - Germany), #12 (van Haastert / Kortholt - Netherlands), #17 (Kimmel - US). Watch the video closely for clues to contenders in the Fastest Cell question! But don’t forget that three teams have yet to be broadcast including some pre-race favorites. These are #1 (Queller - US), #18 (Kay - UK), # 14 (Müller-Taubenberger - Germany).
See the latest video at: Dicty LIVESTREAM Video
Then come to SciCast Race Central to adjust your bets!
Tune in tomorrow dicty fans
Race video has not been refreshed and our pitcrew is concluding technical difficulties with the video are to blame. Tune in tomorrow for what we believe will be a photo finish between several strong contenders, and to see how the 3 teams that had a later starting time fare. They include a pre-race favorite so the outcome is anything but certain.