Measuring Consensus in Binary Forecasts: NFL Game Predictions
Previous research on defining and measuring consensus (agreement) among forecasters has been concerned with evaluation of forecasts of continuous variables. This previous work is not relevant when the forecasts involve binary decisions: up-down or win-lose. In this paper we use Cohen¡¯s kappa coefficient, a measure of inter-rater agreement involving binary choices, to evaluate forecasts of National Football League games. This statistic is applied to the forecasts of 74 experts and 31 statistical systems that predicted the outcomes of games during two NFL seasons. We conclude that the forecasters, particularly the systems, displayed significant levels of agreement and that levels of agreement in picking game winners were higher than in picking against the betting line. There is greater agreement among statistical systems in picking game winners or picking winners against the line as the season progresses, but no change in levels of agreement among experts. High levels of consensus among forecasters are associated with greater accuracy in picking game winners, but not in picking against the line.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
| Length: | 27 pages |
| Date of creation: | Jul 2008 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2008-006 |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Phone: (202) 994-6150 Fax: (202) 994-6147 Web page: http://www.gwu.edu/~forcpgmEmail: More information through EDIRC
|
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Zarnowitz, Victor & Lambros, Louis A, 1987. "Consensus and Uncertainty in Economic Prediction," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 591-621, June.
- Clements, Michael P., 2008. "Consensus and uncertainty: Using forecast probabilities of output declines," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 76-86.
- Schnader, M. H. & Stekler, H. O., 1991. "Do consensus forecasts exist?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 165-170, August.
- Lahiri, Kajal & Teigland, Christie & Zaporowski, Mark, 1988. "Interest Rates and the Subjective Probability Distribution of Inflation Forecasts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 20(2), pages 233-48, May.
- Kolb, R. A. & Stekler, H. O., 1996. "Is there a consensus among financial forecasters?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 455-464, December.
- Gregory, Allan W. & Yetman, James, 2004. "The evolution of consensus in macroeconomic forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 461-473.
- Victor Zarnowitz & Louis A. Lambros, 1983. "Consensus and Uncertainty in Economic Prediction," NBER Working Papers 1171, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Gregory, Allan W & Smith, Gregor W & Yetman, James, 2001. "Testing for Forecast Consensus," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 19(1), pages 34-43, January.
- Kajal Lahiri & J George Wang, 2006. "Subjective Probability Forecasts for Recessions," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 41(2), pages 26-37, April.
- Lahiri, Kajal & Sheng, Xuguang, 2008. "Evolution of forecast disagreement in a Bayesian learning model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 325-340, June.
- Song, ChiUng & Boulier, Bryan L. & Stekler, Herman O., 2007. "The comparative accuracy of judgmental and model forecasts of American football games," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 405-413.
- Rich, R W & Raymond, J E & Butler, J S, 1992. "The Relationship between Forecast Dispersion and Forecast Uncertainty: Evidence from a Survey Data-ARCH Model," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(2), pages 131-48, April-Jun.
- Lahiri, Kajal & Teigland, Christie, 1987. "On the normality of probability distributions of inflation and GNP forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 269-279.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gwc:wpaper:2008-006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Tara M. Sinclair)
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.