Pitch deck for my projects found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yjCCO-2-ClpKiLTNyijbf0XdHbMqJfCq/view?usp=sharing

Project description

I’ve been working in forecasting for a few years now, and I’ve seen lots of great forecasts (and forecasters) that aren’t able to reach most of the people who would benefit from them. I’m launching this project to evaluate the impact of publicly disseminating relevant forecasts through targeted ads, while also supporting the development of standards for impact reporting that can be used for future markets.

This project is one component of three-project collection that is designed to leverage this impact markets in order to explicitly prioritize between three different sets of forecasts to promote - the more funding a given project receives, the more reach ads connected with that project will have.

Investments in this specific project will go towards promoting forecasts that help college students decide on their field of study and evaluate the effectiveness of that advertising campaign.

Once this project is complete, the results and estimated impact will be published using the standardized format developed in “Standardized Tools for Impact Market Reporting”.

What is your track record on similar projects?

I’m a professional forecaster working for Amazon (I also won the ACX 2022 forecasting contest). I’ve previously done work in survey research and causal inference, with a focus on evaluating the effectiveness of educational interventions.

I previously worked in litigation, where I conducted similar research projects for expert testimony in labor and accounting-related lawsuits.

My recent professional focus has been on automating the use of forecasts in business decisionmaking, and this project is a part of my personal interest in “aligning” institutions and market outcomes with human values.

How will you spend your funding?

I’ll be using the funds received in this project to target online ads towards students entering college in a specific and very limited geographic area, directing them towards forecast-related resources designed to help them do things like choose a major more effectively (here’s an example, but I haven’t committed to a particular set of resources yet: https://80000hours.org/articles/college-advice/). I will collect metrics on the performance of these ads, and follow up with a survey designed to evaluate their effectiveness.

I’m personally putting $250 towards each of these mini-markets ($750 total) to provide a baseline ad purchase. Additional funding will be used to broaden the target audience for ads, which I expect will increase impact in a roughly linear way.