Applied for support (again)

I applied again for support to do a PhD. This time last year I was one of the few people who applied and didn't get support. That was seriously demotivating. It's nice though that I am still interested in this topic after all this time. With classes winding down soon, I should be able to make a bit of progress.

Students don't understand shorting

Clermeont vs. Munster games was today. For weeks now the sum of the probabilities of all the outcomes has been significantly greater than 100%. That suggests students didn't get how shorting works. There was easy money on the table.

Incentives

I secured another 6 iPod shuffles as prizes for this semester. Volumes have been really low.

I also decided to put in some sporting questions to try to get students interested. At least now I can check the logs and see if students who come to bet on sports, stay to bet on other things. That will be a useful result.

CIT is offering to support staff (in some unspecified ways) who want to do PhDs. I applied. I toyed with the idea of abandoning ship. But I might as well stick with this topic now.

But I still need a more specific focus.

CIT PM markets cashed out

I finally cashed out all my markets from semester 1 and gave out the last three iPod shuffles. One of the winners was an Erasmus student who had gone home so I gave a prize for 4th place. Interestingly the Erasmus student had already won one anyway.

I have reset everyones cash balance to $5000. There is a school of thought that says successful people should have a bigger say because they were right before. I actually agree, but in this case I think the reset will help get the participation rates up.

I'm going to do much the same as before but on a slightly wider scale. So the students should have more things to bet on. I think the more I ask them to do the more they will do.

Experiments good to go

I spent a lot of time over the past few days setting up my prediction market questions. I'm going to get students to predict the pass rates and attendance rates for different groups of SOFT6007 students. I've also thrown in a few sporting contracts that will close out soon in the home of piquing interest.

It will be very interesting to see how they go.

I am meeting three of the four class groups tomorrow. And the final one is my own anyway. So they could be trading as early as tomorrow night.

I got a good price from Inkling Markets and the interface is nice an simple to use.

Student Prediction Market

I'm hoping to run a predicts market with first year students where I get them to predict the enevtual pass rate for modules they are taking. Knowing this information in advance isn't very useful, but knowing what the students think it might be is. I imagine that if it works a lecturer might start a new topic and see a sudden drop in the share price. That might tell the lecturer that the students find if challenging. Or after an exam the price might go up. That might suggest that the students had been worried by it, but on seeing it felt better. My prediction is that very little will happen. I am expecting it to be a very thin market, but we will see. It's worth a go.

I have some lecturers and the head of department on board. I just need some more cover in case it doesn't work out.

I have tested Inkling.com's online service and I think it will do the job. Inkling seemed interested in the experiment too, and quoted me a very good price.

Just a few ore hurdles to clear now and we should be good to go.

I'm still reading Predictocracy

Predictocracy by Michael Abramowicz is the dog's bollocks. After wading though so many Prediction Markets are Fab papers, it's great to read something serious and thought out. Parts of it are hard work though.

Oracles: Donald N. Thompson

Oracles: How Prediction Markets Turn Employees into VisionariesDonald N. Thompson978-1422183175


I just finished reading this book today. It wasa nice read and it was encouraging to learn that so many people are still interested in PMs. It wasn't a great book though. It mostly file under prediction markets are fab. I didn't think there was much in terms of detail or analysis.


Got a few people and companies to follow up on. But I din't think I'll need to come back to it.


It got me thinking about what kinds of things I wanted in it that weren't there.


Some thought on why and how markets work


Some thought on why they don't 


Someone needs to explain the maths to me


The are different kinds of markets and different ways of expressing odds (largely cultural)


The Picard paradox needs to be thought about more and developed

Question? Ask the Crowd

Question? Ask the Crowd Kipplinger's Personal Finance June 2006 Very general, but some examples I wasn't aware of No need to come back to it 20701739

UC Riverside elabexchange

UCR ran a prediction market for a time. I contacted someone there to see if I could find out what became of it. Lumenogic.com (fka newsfutures)lists UCR as a customer.

12026106 - nothing to do with PM

Place Your Bets: Simon Clarke

Place Your Bets Simin Clarke Director, June 2009 General discussion but includes some examples of PMs that fell by the wayside. InterContinental Hotelscran one for 4 weeks in 2004, but didn't continue with it, preferring social networking with customers instead. FTpredict, by the Financial Times started in 2007, but was let lapse. EA moved away from the stock market metaphor to make the interaction more friendly. Not sure what they did though. Would be interesting to find out. 41672347

Crowd Control: Leah Hoffmann

Crowd Control Leah Hoffmann Communications of the ACM, March 2009, Vol. 52, No. 3 DOI:10.1145/1467247.1467254 Nice overview of crowd sourcing generally. Some nice examples

Betting On Ideas: Gregory Goth

Betting On Ideas Gregory Goth Communications of the ACM, March 2009, Vol. 52, No. 3 DOI: 10.1145/1467247.1467252 General. Prediction markets as indicators of infirmation flow in an organisation. Mentions Flu prediction market. Communications200903-dl

Ideosphee ForeSight Exhange

I tried Ideosphere's ForeSight exchangebagainntoday having retrieved my ancient password. It hasn't improved and is still very difficult to use.

The Tech Buzz Game: Mangold et al

The Tech Buzz Game: Mangold et al IEEE Computer July 2005 Good description of Yahoo's tech buzz game. No need to come back 01463120(3)

RIMDEX to Predict the Market in the Petrochemical Industry

ICIC Chemical Business Americas September 11-16 2006 Short note about launch of rimdex.com beta. A PM for the petrochemical industry It has since closed. Or never really took off. 22957032

Making Decisions Based on the Preferences of Multiple Agents: Vincent Conitzer

Vincent Conitzer Communications of the ACM March 2010 Vol 53 no 3 p84 DOI:10.1145/1666420.166442 Author discusses a variet of decision making strategies including voting and actions. Very general but could be useful for broadening discussion. He does mention the possibility of markets automatically generating options for sale based on combinations of simpler options No need to come back to this Communications201003-dl

The Outcome of Events: Mark Longo

The Outcome of Events: Mark Longo Traders Magazine, May, 2005 Discusses plans my Philadelphia Stock Exchange to allows trades in binary futures. Author things such markets may suffer from public relations problems, much as the "terrorism futures" market did Might be interesting to follow up and see what kinds of futures are being offered there now. The Phily has since merged with NASDAQ and the futures business has gone elsewhere. Betting on events as a hedging strategy for big money is very different from a PM for decision support. But there may be things to be learned from the rules and the structure. http://www.optionsclearing.com/about/publications/publication-listing.jsp 17137930

Modeling Volatility in Prediction Markets: Archak & Ipeirotis

Modeling Volatility in Prediction Markets
Nikolay Archak, Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis
Working paper CEDER-08-07, New York University

Deals with volatility. Some useful references in the introductory sections.

No need to come back
CeDER-08-07