Overview
These guides explain how to interpret prediction markets and public conversation.
Fundamentals
These articles explain how prediction markets work and how they differ from polls and sportsbooks, with background on the contracts and the markets' history.
Trading Prediction Markets
An introduction to event contracts, trading, and the relationship between prices and probabilities.
Event Contracts
How Yes and No positions work, with examples of settlement payments, returns, and related outcomes.
Prediction Market Platforms
How exchanges, brokers, clearinghouses, and blockchain systems divide responsibility for a trade.
History of Prediction Markets
How election betting developed into research markets, commercial exchanges, and blockchain protocols.
Markets vs. Polls
Why voter support differs from a chance of winning, and what research establishes when forecasts are compared.
Markets vs. Sportsbooks
How contract prices compare with sportsbook odds, with differences in trading, costs, and settlement.
Market Mechanics
The price shown on a market page can differ from the price available for a trade. Interpreting it also requires the contract's rules and the process that determines settlement.
Prices and Probabilities
How settlement value connects prices to probabilities, and how fees and time affect that interpretation.
Order Books
How bids and asks are matched, why orders can remain unfilled, and how available quantities affect execution.
Reading a Market
How to interpret a market page's quotes, activity figures, price chart, and contract terms.
Market Resolution
Who determines a contract's outcome, which evidence counts, and how disputes affect settlement.
Forecasting Craft
A probability forecast connects a specific question to evidence about its outcome. These guides develop ways to form that estimate, update it, and assess a forecasting record.
Market Accuracy
How scoring methods, forecast timing, and event selection affect conclusions about market accuracy.
Wisdom of Crowds
How combining estimates can reduce errors, and why shared information and aggregation methods affect the result.
Superforecasting
What the Good Judgment Project found about sustained forecasting performance, with worked examples of reasoning and updating.
Calibration
How probabilities compare with observed event frequencies, and how to interpret a calibration curve.
Brier Score
How to calculate probability forecast errors and compare scores against a relevant benchmark.
Base Rates
How comparable past cases inform an estimate, and how new evidence changes it.
Alternative Data
Sentiment and emotion analysis classify expressions in text. Interpreting their results requires understanding what the labels mean and which posts contributed to the counts.