It’s been wonderful seeing all the activity on Round 1 of the Academy Series over the plast two weeks, and we’re excited to announce that Round 2 will be going live shortly! The Academy Series is a new series of questions designed to be an introduction to forecasting for those who are relatively new and are looking for a new intellectual pursuit this summer. Each question is designed to have clear candidates for reference classes, publicly available data, and relatively fast resolution.

As a whole, the series focuses on topics of general interest and pop culture. Although the questions are designed to be approachable for newer forecasters, the series is open to everyone, and careful inside view arguments and well-judged updating as new information appears could well provide an advantage, so there should be plenty for experienced forecasters to get their teeth into if they wish. If you’ve mainly been a reader of our site so far, and are interested in getting some hands-on forecasting experience, this is the perfect opportunity to get started.

The first series of questions, which opened on June 4, consisted of ten binary questions, one of which has already been resolved.  The most popular Round 1 questions so far are [this](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4565/will-more-than-five-of-the-ten-highest-grossing-films-in-2020-pass-the-bechdel-test/) question about the Bechdel test, which has so far generated 119 predictions from 75 users, and [this](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4555/will-trumps-pants-catch-fire-on-at-least-five-more-occasions-than-bidens-during-the-month-of-july/) question about “pants on fire” ratings for US presidential candidates, which has generated 100 predictions from 73 users. All of the Round 1 questions can be found [here.](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4566/announcing-a-metaculus-academy-summer-series-for-new-forecasters/)

Here are the Round 2 questions:

1.[How many YouTube views will Despacito have on January 12, 2021?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4658/how-many-youtube-views-will-despacito-have-on-january-12-2021/)

2.[What will voter turnout be for the US 2020 presidential election?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4656/what-will-voter-turnout-be-for-the-us-2020-presidential-election/)

3.[What fraction of US Congress seats will be held by people of color following the election on November 3, 2020?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4662/what-fraction-of-us-congress-seats-will-be-held-by-people-of-color-following-the-election-on-november-3-2020/)

4.[What fraction of the US Congress will be women following the election on November 3, 2020?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4661/what-fraction-of-the-us-congress-will-be-women-following-the-election-on-november-3-2020/)

5.[What will be the difference in July 2020 performance between the HFR Women Index and the HFR 500 Fund-Weighted Composite Index?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4659/what-will-be-the-difference-in-july-2020-performance-between-the-hfr-women-index-and-the-hfr-500-fund-weighted-composite-index/)

6.[When will Ninja first lose the top spot as the most followed account on Twitch?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4665/when-will-ninja-first-lose-the-top-spot-as-the-most-followed-account-on-twitch/)

7.[How many paid memberships will Netflix have worldwide on December 31st 2020?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4664/how-many-paid-memberships-will-netflix-have-worldwide-on-december-31st-2020/)

8.[How long will it take to listen to every episode of the 80,000 Hours Podcast released in 2020?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4663/how-long-will-it-take-to-listen-to-every-episode-of-the-80000-hours-podcast-released-in-2020/)

9.[How many episodes of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast will be released in the run-up to the US 2020 presidential election?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4660/how-many-episodes-of-the-fivethirtyeight-politics-podcast-will-be-released-in-the-run-up-to-the-us-2020-presidential-election/)

10.[When will @JoeBiden reach 10% as many Twitter followers as @realdonaldtrump?](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4657/when-will-joebiden-reach-10-as-many-twitter-followers-as-realdonaldtrump/)


The complete list of questions from both series may be found [here](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/?search=cat:series--academy-series), or by searching for the Academy Series category.

Again, massive thank you to Metaculus user [@alexrjl](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/111911/) for spearheading question writing for this series and supporting the creation of fun, interactive, educational content to introduce more people to the science of forecasting.

Happy predicting!