Student Forecasting Tournaments

Explore Decision Education concepts through a gamified learning experience

Forecasting The Future 2024

Forecasting the Future 2024 is a free, public tournament, open to any US-based middle or high schooler (ages 13-19). Registration is now closed for this tournament, during which students can earn recognition for their forecasting talents while developing valuable decision-making skills.

Tournament details:

  • Start Date: November 11, 2024
  • Registration Deadline: November 10, 2024, 11:59 PM ET
  • Duration: Six weeks
  • Open to: Middle and high school students (ages 13-19)
  • Grand Prize: $2,500, with additional prizes available

Prizes

Competitors’ scores will be calculated based on how accurate and timely their answers are compared to others. This is called the “Relative Brier Score.” The closer a competitor’s score is to 0, the higher they will rank on the leaderboard. Participants with the best scores at the end of the tournament will win the following prizes:

  • 1st Place: $2,500
  • 2nd-3rd Place: $1,000
  • 4th-5th Place: $500
  • 6th – 10th Place: $100 Amazon digital gift card
  • 11th – 40th Place: $50 Amazon digital gift card
  • And many more surprise chances to win!

In addition to the prizes above, at the end of each forecasting question, the competitor with the closest final point estimate will receive a $50 digital gift card.

 

Strengthening Forecasting Skills in Students—Because Forecasting is an Essential Part of Decision-Making

The Alliance is bringing Decision Education to more students across the country through Student Forecasting Tournaments—exciting, gamified learning opportunities to practice making predictions about real-life events and improve decision-making skills.

In each tournament, students submit their own forecasts about current, real-world events. At the end of the tournament, the students with the most accurate forecasts win! Read more about our previous Student Forecasting Tournament.

What is Forecasting?

Forecasting involves making predictions about a future event or outcome based on historical and current data.

Why Should We Teach Students About Forecasting?

Forecasting is an essential part of making decisions. Through forecasting, students develop applied decision-making skills such as exploring base rates, evaluating data sources, updating their beliefs, resisting cognitive biases, and thinking probabilistically. These skills align with the Decision Education K-12 Learning Domains.

Questions?

If you have any questions or need help, you can contact the competition organizers at forecasting@alliancefordecisioneducation.org

If your interested in supporting our forecasting tournaments or other initiatives, please visit our Donate page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Using current events, students learn the skills to test, bring to life, and sharpen their decision-making skills. When they learn how to predict the outcome of future events, they learn to explore an evolving world in a structured way—developing the skills and dispositions to update their beliefs based on new information. Forecasting tournaments provide a gamified way for students to engage with Decision Education—and it’s fun!

Students answer questions about current events with various focuses—like sports, pop culture, the arts, the economy, and more! Students choose from multiple possible outcomes for each question, and they provide their forecast and rationale for their answer. An example question could be: “How much money will Inside Out 2 gross on its opening weekend?” Students would look at the various outcome options for the question—in this case: under $40 million, between $40 million and $65 million, or more than $65 million—and provide their forecast and rationale for their selection.

The Brier score was originally proposed to quantify the accuracy of weather forecasts, but it can be used to describe the accuracy of any probabilistic forecast. The Brier score indicates roughly how far away from the truth a forecast was.

The Brier score is the squared error of a probabilistic forecast. One way to calculate a Brier score is to first calculate the forecast probability, which may range between 0 (0%) and 1 (100%). Then, code reality as either 0 (if the event did not happen) or 1 (if the event did happen). For each answer option, take the difference between the forecast and the correct answer, square the differences, and add them all together.

For example: For a yes/no question where someone forecasted 70% and the event happened, the score would be (1 – 0.7)² + (0 – 0.3)² = 0.18. For a question with three possible outcomes (A, B, C) where they forecasted A = 60%, B = 10%, C = 30% and A occurred, their score would be (1 – 0.6)² + (0 – 0.1)² + (0 – 0.3)² = 0.26. The best (lowest) possible Brier score is 0, and the worst (highest) possible Brier score is 2.

Students with the lowest Brier score (i.e, the most correct predictions with the highest level of confidence) win.

 

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