Wisdom of the Crowd: Crowd Analysis Project

The Project

Predicting future outcomes is crucial for success in politics, companies, and for society in general. One fundamental problem rests on the uncertainty of future outcomes. Although people may have intuitions and knowledge about the future, such insights are usually dispersed across many stakeholders and individuals, as they are heterogeneously informed.

Previous research has shown that combining individual predictions in various ways — ranging from simple (e.g., median across all opinions/beliefs) to complex approaches (e.g., prediction markets with monetary stakes) — can increase prediction accuracy. This phenomenon is typically referred to as "Wisdom of the Crowd" (WoC).

Yet, little is known about which aggregation mechanism, either alone or in combination, increases the accuracy of WoC. In WoCCAP, we invite research teams from around the globe to propose WoC approaches for four different domains and run a horse race to investigate which approach has the highest prediction accuracy.

All research team members will receive co-authorship as a part of a consortium of authors. In addition, each of the four winning teams will be rewarded with a cash prize of EUR 2.500 (for a total maximum winning sum of EUR 10.000).

Download the Call for Participation.