Predicting/hypothesizing the findings of the M4 Competition

By Spyros Makridakis, Evangelos Spiliotis, Vassilios Assimakopoulos. 2020

31 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Science is caught up in a replication crisis which has negative implications for published findings that cannot be reproduced by other researchers. However, such is not the case with the M4 Competition, which not only provided the means of effectively reproducing its submissions, but also preregistered ten predictions/hypotheses about its expected results two-and-a-half months before its completion. From a scientific point of view, attempting to predict the results of a study is far more powerful than merely justifying them in hindsight after they have become available. The present paper presents these ten predictions/hypotheses that the organizers of the M4 Competition made and evaluates them based on the actual results. It is shown that at least six of the ten predictions/hypotheses were entirely correct, while two were partially correct, one required additional information to be confirmed, and the remaining one was not predicted correctly.