Free Republic

American spy chiefs are offering $250,000 in prize money for a competition that will test how successfully someone can predict future unknowns such as political election results or missile tests. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity [IARPA], which sits within the office of America’s top intelligence official, is behind the challenge, which is designed to improve forecasting techniques. Participants will be asked more than 300 questions about the outcomes of various issues across a nine-month period. The winner will collect $153,000, with smaller prizes to runner-ups. Sample questions listed include “Which political party will win the most seats during the...

ConsiderTheProbabilities.com is an attempt to objectively, honestly, and logically discuss the much-debated subject of creation versus evolution.

Labor Day to Election Day patterns from past elections help put the current situation in contextPRINCETON, NJ -- The fundamentals of the presidential race did not change dramatically as a result of the Republican convention. George W. Bush had a slight lead over John Kerry among likely voters prior to the convention. He has now edged further ahead.A question of keen interest to election observers focuses on the possibility of significant or dramatic change from this point forward. Bush is ahead of Kerry by seven points among likely voters. What is the probability that Kerry can come from behind and...

[Q NOTE: Many bolds within paragraphs emphasis added. Red text at the end was in the original] Rebutting the Skeptics' Likely Criticisms Let's look at some of the skeptic's likely responses to what we have presented, and consider their validity. The Hanukah Example Wasn't Intended to be the Result of Exhaustive Searching While this is true in a strict sense, such a response belies the fact that there is a very serious limit to how many relatively improbable ELSs you can find about one topic in any text if the author of the text wasn't trying to embed them. If...