Prognosticators

Here’s an interesting paper:
Analysis of Forcast Accuracy in the Political Media.
A class at Hamilton College, led by public policy professor P. Gary Wyckoff, analyzed the predictions of 26 prognosticators/pundits between September 2007 and December 2008. They randomly sampled the predictions of these prognosticators and looked at the outcomes. They assigned scores and ratings. A prognosticators with a score of over 5, they classified as good. A score of 0 to 5 they classified as bad and a score under 0 as ugly. A score of under 0 means that the prognosticator did worse at their predictions than if they had flipped a coin.
Paul Krugman scored the highest with an 8.23. Out of 17 predictions, he was only wrong once.
Running some statistics upon their data resulted in a couple of indicators for whom you should not listen:

Individuals who hold law degrees are less accurate when making predictions.
Conservatives, according to our data, are also less accurate.

It’s actually a fairly fun paper to read.