Geopolitical Forecasting Challenge 2 encourages novel approaches that embrace non-traditional methods and harnesses the collective community, while offering Solvers the chance to win a share of $250,000 in prize money.
The collective effort of GF Challenge 2 stimulates breakthroughs in the science of forecasting, leading to greater strategic advantages for maintaining global security, predicting economic trends, and directing the need for humanitarian efforts.
Solvers, whether individuals or teams, will create innovative solutions and methods to produce forecasts to a set of more than 300 questions referred to as Individual Forecasting Problems (IFPs), released regularly over the course of the nine-month Challenge. Each IFP includes a set of exhaustive and mutually exclusive response options, as well as firm resolution criteria. IFPs remain open until a final specified closing date or until the event defined in the IFP is reported as occurring.
Sample Questions:
How many missile test events will North Korea conduct in August 2019?
Will there be a locally-transmitted case of the Zika virus in Brazil in July 2019?
What will be the daily closing price of gold on June 2019 in USD?
Which political party will win the most seats during the Polish Parliamentary Election?
A continuously updated stream of probabilistic forecasts from human forecasters in JSON format will be provided to Solvers which can be used to generate solutions, and Solvers are encouraged to use their own data and models to supplement their forecasts. As long as an IFP is open, Solvers can continue to update their forecast for that question.
The administration of the Challenge is automated and secured through an API that provides the forecasting questions and individual human forecasts and receives forecast submissions, so having at least one team member with programming or developer skills is essential for participation.
Sign Up: Register on HeroX as an individual Solver or Solver Team. You can create or join a team later. When registration opens, just click on “Accept the Challenge” at the top of this page. You’ll continue to come back to the Challenge page for updates and Challenge details, as well as to participate in the Challenge Forum.
Connect to the Cultivate API: Register with Cultivate Labs, and one representative per team should acquire your API token. Via the API, Solvers will receive all Individual Forecasting Problems (IFPs) and a continuously updating human forecaster data stream. The official Challenge Leaderboard and all technical interactions with the Challenge API happen though Cultivate Labs.
Prizes
1st Place: $33,000
2nd Place: $22,000
3rd Place: $15,000
4th Place: $10,000
5th Place: $7,500
Potential Bonus Pool:
Qualifying Overall winners split a potential bonus pool of $120,000
There are 4 Tiers representing increasing levels of performance. Tier 4 is the highest level of performance.
Tiers are determined based on the percent improvement (IMP) of Solver/team score as compared to the baseline.
The total bonus pool is determined by the tier achieved by the 1st place overall winner. If 1st place hits Tier 4, the collective bonus pool for all qualifying winners will be $120,000.
Each of the top 5 overall winners who achieve Tier 1 or better receive shares of the total bonus pool equal to the top tier they reach. A team reaching Tier 3 would receive 3 shares.
Tier
Measurement
Total Bonus Pool
4
IMP ≥ 0.20
$120,000
3
IMP ≥ 0.15
$90,000
2
IMP ≥ 0.10
$60,000
1
IMP ≥ 0.05
$30,000
Example Bonus Calculation:
If these are the top Tiers for the overall winners: Total Bonus Pool = $120,000
Total Shares Awarded = 14
Example Bonus Awards:
1st Place
2nd Place
3rd Place
4th Place
5th Place
$ 34,285.71
$ 25,714.29
$ 25,714.29
$ 17,142.86
$ 17,142.86
Additional Prizes
Each prize has a set of minimum prize requirements that will determine a Solver’s eligibility to win that prize as outlined in the Rules (Coming Soon) (link to rules tab)
Milestones open and close on the 24-hour Forecasting Day schedule
Milestone Awards: 10 awards of $750 per milestone period
Milestone Period 3 (Sep 19 – Nov 29)
Milestone Period 2 (July 18 – Sep 19)
Milestone Period 1 (May 15 – July 18)
Academic Award: $7,500
Workshop Presenter Awards: $12,500 (up to 5 awards of $2,500)
After nine months and 304 resolved and scored IFPs, we are so excited to announce the winners! Without further ado, the winners of the GF Challenge 2 are….
Overall Winners
1st: cassandre ($69,923.08)
2nd: datscilly ($49,692.31)
3rd: michalbod ($42,692.31)
4th: Ckar ($28,461.54)
5th: EagleWings ($16,730.77)
Academic Winner
LIA ($7,500)
Congratulations to the winners and thank you everyone for all your hard work and contributions to the field of forecasting!
Don’t Stop Solving: While this does mark the end of this particular Challenge, other opportunities exist across IARPA, as well as the government at large. You can continue to follow IARPA on Twitter (@IARPAnews) or monitor Challenge.gov. The unique and out-of-the-box thinking demonstrated across this Challenge is needed for other complex issues that impact us all.
The third milestone closed on November 29th. The top ten Solvers for this Milestone will win $750 each, with each winner getting an equal share of the $7,500 award! Forecasts for the IFPs that have RESOLVED during Milestone 3 are included in the award calculation. Congratulations to the winners captured in the leaderboard below.
Milestone 3 Leaderboard
For more details and eligibility requirements on additional prize incentives, check out the HeroX Guidelines tab.
The second milestone closed on September 19th. The top ten Solvers for this Milestone will win $750 each, with each winner getting an equal share of the $7,500 award! Forecasts for the IFPs that have RESOLVED during Milestone 2 are included in the award calculation. Congratulations to the winners captured in the leaderboard below.
Keep submitting solutions so that you can win a share of the Milestone 3 award, which closes November 29th.
For more details and eligibility requirements on additional prize incentives, check out the HeroX Guidelines tab.
The first milestone closed yesterday, July 18th. The top 10 Solvers for this Milestone will win $750 each, with each winner getting an equal share of the $7,500 award! Forecasts for the IFPs that have RESOLVED during Milestone 1 are included in the award calculation. Congratulations to the winners captured in the leaderboard below.
Keep submitting solutions so that you can win a share of the Milestone 2 award, which closes September 19th. For more details and eligibility requirements on additional prize incentives, check out the
The Challenge launch is finally here! IFPs and data start flowing at 2pm ET, and it's time to begin submitting forecasts.
Geopolitical Forecasting Challenge 2 encourages novel approaches that embrace non-traditional methods and harnesses the collective community, while offering Solvers the chance to win a share of $250,000 in prize money.
Submit forecasts from up to 40 different method slots. This gives you the opportunity to submit 40 forecasts for each individual forecasting problems (IFP) — but, each method should have a consistent and describable methodology behind it which you maintain throughout the Challenge.
Check your API regularly for newly released IFPs and additional updates. New IFPs will typically be released on Wednesdays between 12:30 PM and 2:00 PM ET, but clarifications and IFP resolutions could occur at any time – so checking the API more frequently is recommended.
Review sample IFPs before the Challenge. We’ve posted sample IFPs for Solvers. These are some of the anticipated IFPs that will be released in the challenge. These forecasting question templates may help you get a head start.
Set up a push API to get notifications of new data. If you are set up to receive HTTP POST notifications, then instructions for how to set up an API POST hook are available on the Cultivate Labs platform in the API documentation under “push APIs”. If you have a web server, you can be notified automatically when new IFPs are posted or updated.
