When a question is in Forecasting Review or Generation you be able to make forecasts on the question.

• sub-questions must be Approved for forecasts to be made

The control for entering a forecast depends on the conditional/questions type - i.e. likelihood or amount (shown below)

General

Notes

Enter a note with the forecast

• this will be posted as a comment and also may be displayed in the results visualization
• if you don’t want this posted as a comment, turn off the “post” switch

Draft

Once a change has been made the draft status displays

• clicking X will cancel the draft changes back to the latest forecast (or blank if none)

Remove

To remove your forecast, click the vertical dots menu → Remove my forecast

Participation

If you have been tasked on the question, you will see a TODO [complete]/[total] indicator next to each conditional with your progress.

Participation

Submitting a forecast

Submitting a forecast

Hard cut-off

A question creator can set a hard cut-off on the left and or right hand side. (usually 0 on the left). If so:

• on your forecast you can configure the percent of the cumulative distribution which occurs at that boundary.
• no probability will be given outside the hard cut-off
• as a forecaster you can’t change the hard cut-off

Note: quantity forecasting since February 11, 2025 allows users to pan and zoom without worry about changing the hard cut-off .

Likelihood

Likelihood forecasts are the % chance of something happening. There are a few different ways you can enter the value

• drag the circle to the right for 100%, or to the left towards 0%
• click on the circle, then enter the value as text in the popup
• on hover arrows < > will appear ether side of the circle. Click these to “nudge” the likelihood by 0.1%
• after clicking the circle, use the left and right arrow keys to move by 1%. Hold ctrl to move by 0.1%

Note:

• You are prevented from estimating 0 or 100%, but can get as close as you want

Likelihood forecast

Likelihood forecast

Quantity

Quantity forecasts are a probability distribution for a given amount. By default this is entered as a logistic, but you can switch to drawing when you need more control.

Logistic

This is the default mode for entering a quantity forecast. To create a forecast:

• drag the centre circle to place your 50th percentile estimate
• clicking on the middle circle will also show the value for you to enter with text
• drag the smaller left and right circles to control the tails
  • hold shift to drag them symmetrically

Quantity forecast

Quantity forecast

Draw

To switch to Draw — an editor that gives you full control over the probability distribution — click the "Draw" tab at the top right. The existing distribution will be converted into a drawing as your starting point.

• Click and drag existing points to customize the distribution.
• hold shift and click, or click and drag to select multiple points
  • when multiple points are selected, the will be dragged together
  • the delete button, or drag-moving will apply to all the selected points
• Hold the Control key to add or remove points. Alternatively, you can switch to add/remove mode using the tabs at the top left.
• If you need more room or greater precision, adjust the bounds using the same controls as with a logistic. This adjustment won't impact your forecast unless a hard cut-off is enabled.

Tail Percent

For the points at the far left or right, if they are outside the question bounds, you have the option to enter what percentage of the distribution is contained outside that point.

forecast-draw.mp4