Increasing the Accuracy of Forecasting Outcomes
What if you could increase the odds of calculating the future with
precision? Prepare to do just that as you step into March Madness with
Associate Professor Wolfgang Jank. He is an expert on prediction markets, a
means of tapping into collective and aggregated knowledge to improve the
accuracy of individual expert predictions.
Friendly wagering on the outcome of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball
Championship Final Four has become something of a national pastime and will
offer just one example in this informative, fun and interactive
presentation. Attendees will learn about prediction markets and gain
hands-on experience in leveraging them as a business decision making tool –
for example, to measure the possibility for success of innovative products
or the validity of business decisions.
| March 27, 2009 |
| 8 a.m. - 10 a.m. |
| Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center |
| Cost: $25; $10 students; $15 alumni/faculty/staff |
Wolfgang Jank is an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s
Robert H. Smith School of Business. He is a leading expert in the practice
of employing ideas from statistics and data mining to solve problems in
electronic commerce, marketing and operations management. Jank’s research
has been widely published and he has authored more than 50 articles, book
chapters and conference papers, as well as presented his work at national
and international meetings. Jank received his master’s degree from the
Technical University of Aachen (Germany) and his PhD in statistics from the
University of Florida.
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Play the Smith March-Madness Prediction
Market!
Who will become national champion? Will Maryland make it to the
Elite Eight? Will Duke win it all? Make a friendly competitive
“wager” and test your knowledge with Smith’s March-Madness
Prediction Market – offered in conjunction with this March 27
ThoughtLeadership@Smith session with Professor Wolfgang Jank. The
winner will be announced on April 6.
To participate, please visit
http://141.2.75.50/vsm_maryland_2009/ and click on “Register.”
Each participant will be endowed with an initial $10,000 of
(virtual) cash. Please visit “Trading Rules” and “Final Stock
Values” to learn about the rules of this game. The tab “Stocks”
contains the individual events on which you can place your bets.
GOOD LUCK!
Background information: This prediction market is part
of an ongoing research project between
Professor
Wolfgang Jank from the Smith School of Business and
Professor Bernd Skiera from the University of Frankfurt/
Germany. One of their current projects involves “second-generation”
prediction markets such as prediction markets for preference
elicitation or idea generation. For more information, please see a
recent working paper.
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