Metaculus is pleased to announce the Academy Series, 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.

The Academy Series will consist of two sets of questions, one binary and one range-based. The first set of ten binary questions will open on Thursday June 4, and the second set of range-based questions will open two weeks later. 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.

Here is the first set of questions:

1. Will more than five of the ten highest grossing films in 2020 pass the Bechdel test?

2. Will a TikTok user hit 100m followers by the end of 2020?

3. Will Trump's pants catch fire on at least five more occasions than Biden's during the month of July?

4. Will more than one entrant achieve a perfect score in the 2020 International Mathematical Olympiad in St. Petersburg?

5. Will 2020’s UK Christmas #1 be a joke?

6. Will the artist who performs 2020’s UK Christmas #1 be the winner of a reality television show?

7. Will J.K. Rowling’s “The Ickabog” reach #1 on Amazon.co.uk’s bestseller list within a week of its release?

8. Will the next winner of the Booker Prize be female?

9. Will 3Blue1Brown begin a new video series in the month of July?

10. Will the first post from Instagram’s official account @instagram after this question closes be a photograph or video of an instagram user?

The complete list may be found here, or by searching for the Academy Series category.

We’d like to thank Metaculus user @alexrjl for his initiative, contributions, and enthusiasm, without which this series would not have come to fruition.

Happy predicting!