Comments on: The Prediction Market Search Engine (pmia) http://www.altsearchengines.com/2007/11/20/the-prediction-market-search-engine-pmia/ The most wonderful search engines you've never seen! Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:51:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Alex Kirtland / UsableMarkets http://www.altsearchengines.com/2007/11/20/the-prediction-market-search-engine-pmia/#comment-21735 Alex Kirtland / UsableMarkets Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:04:34 +0000 http://altsearchengines.com/2007/11/20/the-prediction-market-search-engine-pmia/#comment-21735 It's essentially a search that is circumscribed to all the prediction market sites on the internet. As I understand it, it is limited to sites which actually host prediction markets, as opposed to sites that talk about prediction markets (such as UsableMarkets, or MidasOracle). It's helpful, of course, if you understand what a prediction market is. Wikipedia has a good description (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market). In short, it's a betting market about the outcomes of future events, with the prices of specific outcomes (Hillary is the next US president) being equal to the probability of that outcome occurring. If the contract was priced at 25 cents, then the market believes that that outcome has a 25% chance of occurring. What would be really powerful, but what PMIA search doesn't do yet, is if you could search for a specific contract - Hillary wins, for example - across all markets which have such a contract, and compare their predictions (or prices). That is something that doesn't currently exist (although Slate groups together some prediction for political markets), but that people have been looking for. ~alex www.usableMarkets.com It’s essentially a search that is circumscribed to all the prediction market sites on the internet. As I understand it, it is limited to sites which actually host prediction markets, as opposed to sites that talk about prediction markets (such as UsableMarkets, or MidasOracle).

It’s helpful, of course, if you understand what a prediction market is. Wikipedia has a good description (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market). In short, it’s a betting market about the outcomes of future events, with the prices of specific outcomes (Hillary is the next US president) being equal to the probability of that outcome occurring. If the contract was priced at 25 cents, then the market believes that that outcome has a 25% chance of occurring.

What would be really powerful, but what PMIA search doesn’t do yet, is if you could search for a specific contract - Hillary wins, for example - across all markets which have such a contract, and compare their predictions (or prices). That is something that doesn’t currently exist (although Slate groups together some prediction for political markets), but that people have been looking for.

~alex
http://www.usableMarkets.com

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