Winners in the forecast polls

[Martin]

We had forecast polls last year to see who could predict closest to future research output and citations.

 

Yourda and Luc won a couple

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18514

 

Now I want to determine the winner in the 2005 STRING CITATIONS forecast contest.

 

I think it may be MacSwell, I have to check.

 

STRING CITATIONS was not an easy one to guess, the details are here

http://scienceforums.net/forums/showpost.php?p=184908&postcount=18

 

"recent" was defined as meaning that the paper appeared sometime in the past 5 years.

The thing to predict was HOW MANY RECENT STRING PAPERS WOULD GARNER 125+ CITATIONS IN 2005.

 

It used to be, when interest in string was very lively and hopes high, that a dozen or so recent papers would get 125+ citations, but there has been a slump in citations and it has come down to like 4 or 5

 

I guessed 5, which i thought was pessimistic but reasonable. MacSwell guessed 2! which would be unprecedently low, if it turned out to be right.

 

I will go to the SLAC/Stanford library site that keeps the stats on citations and see what happened with this.

 

==============

more details about the forecast polls

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showpost.php?p=184692&postcount=104

 

http://scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=12690

[Martin]

we defined recent to be in the last 5 years so in 2005 it means 2001 thru 2005 inclusive

I am going down this list looking for recent string papers

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/library/topcites/2005/annual.shtml

 

this one got 223

hep-th/0301240

 

this one got 169

hep-th/0105097

 

this one got 142

hep-th/0202021

 

AH SHUCKS, there were more than 2 highly cited papers (125 or more citations) so that means that MacSwell did NOT win. Sorry MacSwell I am going down the list highest first, let's see if there are more...

 

Nope, the next highest was

this one that got 118

hep-th/0308055

 

which is below our arbitrary cutoff of 125, that defined what you were supposed to predict.

 

so the answer was THREE highly cited recent papers-----a few years back the analogous count would have been ten or more.

So who predicted closest to right?

 

DAMN! IT WAS YOURDA AGAIN!

 

That can't be I will have to double check

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showpost.php?p=184910&postcount=105

 

Yes Yourdadonapogostick was the only one who guessed right on the nose 3. there were some other poeple who guessed correct RANGES like 2-5.

 

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO TOOK PART AND OFFERED PREDICTIONS! and especially to Yourda who has won three polls so far, not by merit or just deserts surely, but by sheer luck or simply being a good guesser. Some people just happen to be good guessers and polls are a way to find out.

 

MacSwell thanks for reminding me that it was time to check the guesses against the SLAC/Stanford citations report.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Thanks Martin that was fun.