How to Write Forecasting Questions

The author would be happy about help on this article.

Difficulties

• Finding good resolution criteria
• Writing questions relevant to the information you'd want to know

Key Questions

• Binary vs range questions
  • Binary questions get a lot more forecasts [citation needed] which makes them more accurate [citation needed]
  • Range questions provide much more information (because they are effectively very many binary questions stacked together)
• What is the resolution criteria?
  • Questions do not resolve against "reality" they resolve against whatever source is stated

Norms

Rather than writing "When will [public figure] die" write "When will [public figure] leave office" or "stop being important in the way we care about"

Questions don't need to be that long. Depending on platform, just a question statement and resolution criteria might be enough for a question which resolves in 3 months. At most you want a paragraph of introduction, a questions statement, resolution criteria and a few ambiguous cases and how to deal with them. The further into the future the more you want clarity as to what happens if the resolution criteria disappears. How might the community disagree over a resolution?

External Links

• Metaculus: Question writing and submission guidelines
• Metaculus: Question writing checklist
• Foretold: Best Practices for Question Writing
• AI Forecasting Dictionary: Best Practices for Question Writing

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