Welcome to the Bridgewater Forecasting Contest! I’m Ryan, Forecasting Program Coordinator at Metaculus, and my colleagues and I will be your hosts for this competition. We’re excited to kick things off and look forward to a highly competitive tournament!

This post will serve as a place for us to share some information and tips, and as a place where you can ask questions. If you have questions about making forecasts, scoring, contest rules, or anything else please feel free to post a comment here and I or one of my colleagues will get you an answer.

Feel free to use this thread to ask questions to other participants as well! While this is a forecasting competition, we also consider forecasting to be a collaborative effort and a valuable way to improve our collective reasoning. So if you're curious about other strategies, approaches, or information sources you're free to ask those kinds of questions here, and participants are welcome to respond if they like.

**A few tips:**

* You can see all the questions at [**<u>metaculus.com/tournament/bridgewater/</u>**](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/bridgewater/).
* You'll be scored over the entire lifetime of the question, so **for the best score, submit predictions soon after questions launch**, on all questions, and update your predictions as new information arises.
* You'll also get the best score, in expectation, if you **predict your true beliefs**.
* You'll see the Community Prediction on a few questions right away, while most others will be hidden. That's by design; it's fun to compare your forecast to the community's, but **it takes skill to predict well absent the community aggregate.**
* We encourage you to **read the resolution criteria carefully.** The resolution criteria, including the fine print, are the most important part of each question, because they spell out how and when a question will resolve.

And here’s a brief reminder of some of the key details we describe in the[ <u>How it Works page</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/bridgewater/how-it-works/).

* **Only registered participants can receive prizes.** To make sure you’ve successfully registered, check the registration page at[ <u>metaculus.com/bridgewater</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/bridgewater/). If you’ve registered you should see “You’re all set!” at the bottom of the page, and below that you should see which leaderboards you’re eligible for. If you can’t see that, please make sure you’re logged in, and register if you haven’t yet. The last day to register and ensure you’ll be eligible for prizes is March 6. If you’re having issues seeing your registration status or your leaderboard eligibility is not correctly shown, please reach out to us at [<u>support@metaculus.com</u>](mailto:support@metaculus.com). If you have friends who would like to participate, please direct them to[<u> metaculus.com/bridgewater</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/bridgewater/) so they can register.
* **There will be four rounds of questions, and your score will be based on your performance in all four rounds.** We have 15 questions for you today, 15 opening at 11am ET on Monday the 19th\*, 10 opening at 11 AM ET on Monday the 26th, and 10 final questions opening at 11am ET on Monday February 2nd.
* **If you're new to forecasting**, check out [<u>How it Works</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/bridgewater/how-it-works/), which has some handy resources.
* **Bridgewater and Metaculus encourage comments**. While you'll be scored only on the accuracy of your forecasts, Bridgewater is especially interested in the reasoning of top participants. Check out our [<u>community guidelines</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/help/guidelines/) and comment away. Note that comments should be substantive and explain your reasoning, and that comments are not required (forecasts are entered in the interface, not by leaving a comment). To ensure a good forecasting experience for participants we’ll delete low-effort comments, including comments that were copied verbatim from AI.
* **If you have a question or concern**, you can tag @admins in the comments on any tournament page, and a Metaculus admin will take a look. You can also ask questions in the comments on this post.
* **If you notice something wrong with a question**, tag @admins in the comments. We'll try to fix it right away.
* **We'll launch leaderboards once the first question is resolved**. The competition should be tight. We're expecting several thousand participants in this tournament. I can't wait to see how it turns out.
* **Did you miss the tutorial or want to retake it?** Click your username at the top of the page and you’ll find the tutorial link in the dropdown menu.

Good luck, everyone! – Ryan

*\* As we describe in the*[ *<u>How it Works page</u>*](https://www.metaculus.com/bridgewater/how-it-works/#:~:text=value%20actually%20is.-,A%20Note%20On%20Weighting,-This%20year%20the)*, there are 15 top-level questions, though some of these are group questions that count as a total weight equivalent to one question.*