2014 Prognostication Quiz: Question 1, Freedom

Welcome to a new year of prognostication! We have 51 entrants this year, up from 45 last year, thanks in large measure to my high school friend Jeffrey T., who is an opera singer and English instructor living in Japan. He made the 2014 Prognostication Quiz mandatory reading for the seven students in his graduate course for Chinese exchange students on current events in American culture. A warm welcome to Yue Nan, Xing Yue, Zhangying, Xiaoqi, Bao Bin, Hexiang, and Ling Chen!

1. Freedom (January)

Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many of countries are free, partly free, or not free. The 2013 report calculated that 90 of the world’s 195 nations were “free” in 2012. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2013? Note: the twelve worst "free" countries (with the highest likelihood of being downgraded) are Botswana, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Lesotho, Montenegro, Peru, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tonga. The twelve best "partly free" countries (with the highest likelihood of being upgraded) are Albania, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ecuador, Georgia, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Philippines, Seychelles, and Tanzania. The number of times each answer has occurred since the fall of the iron curtain is indicated in parentheses.

How will the number of free countries change?
a. minus two or worse (3), 88 or fewer total
b. minus one (4), 89 total
c. no change (6), 90 total
d. plus one (3), 91 total
e. plus two or three (3), 92-93 total
f. plus four or more (3), 94 or more total

It was a bad year for freedom! Not a single country advanced into "free" territory, according to the analysts at Freedom House, while two countries regressed: tiny Sierra Leone and massive Indonesia. The answer to Question 1 of the 2014 Prognostication Quiz is the rather depressing A.

Only four people guessed the correct answer. The most popular answers were C (17 entrants) and D (14 entrants). So most people were relatively optimistic about their fellow humans. Not so much for the quartet who ended up winning the question.

The Pessimists
Todd C.
Nadir Y.
Craig W.
Larry A.

Leaderboard

I'm doing the tie-breaking for the leaderboard a bit differently this year. I will break ties according to who is winning the financial indicators (Questions 11 and 12 and the tiebreaker) at the time of posting. With those new rules, the top two spots go to cousins of mine, Todd C. and Nadir Y., neither of whom has spent much time at the top of the leaderboard. Craig W. and Larry A. are not far behind, despite slightly sub-optimal answers on the financial indicators. It is still very early in the year, after all.

Craig W. and Larry A. might have been influenced to write in A as their first guess because they chose to enter pleasing patterns with their answers.

Craig: A A A A A A A A A A A A

Larry: A A B A A B A A B A A B

I'm sure they were both sad that they couldn't continue those patterns in to the Death questions 13 - 15, which require three different letters. Todd C. did a much better job with that.

Todd: A B B A C A D A B B B B B R A!

Perennial answer-speller Ekrem S. usually writes a (very) short story about the exploits of 70's mega-band ABBA, but chose to branch out this year a bit to write an introspective and ironic piece of answer-poetry.

Ekrem: F A C A D E. F A C A D E. F A C A D E.

You will notice, of course, that Ekrem seems to have given 18 answers to the 15 questions. In fact, Ekrem likes to encode his Dow Jones tie-breaker in his answer-poem, too. He is predicting that the Dow Jones will lose an astounding 12,917 points this year to close at 2,872. Equivalently, in hexadecimal, he is predicting the the Dow Jones will fall 0x32CF to close at 0xADE. (See what he did there?)



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Rank	Score	Name
1	1	Todd C.
2	1	Nadir Y.
3	1	Craig W.
4	1	Larry A.
5	0	Ellen Y.
6	0	Jason C.
7	0	Jenny A.
8	0	Zhiqi Q.
9	0	Chris M.
10	0	Cameron M.
11	0	Yue Nan
12	0	Ryan C.
13	0	Ryan M.
14	0	Ekrem S.
15	0	Stacey C.
16	0	Dave S.
17	0	Melissa A.
18	0	Gloria T.
19	0	Stephanie A.
20	0	Janet C.
21	0	Rachel F.
22	0	Adrian C.
23	0	Jeff C.
24	0	Valerie M.
25	0	Keila B.
26	0	Tori V.
27	0	Grant M.
28	0	Michael A.
29	0	Collette T.
30	0	Ron D.
31	0	Ben S.
32	0	Dawn K.
33	0	Matthew D.
34	0	Chris C.
35	0	Adam K.
36	0	Sarah T.
37	0	Megan T.
38	0	Xing Yue
39	0	Sarah M.
40	0	Liz K.
41	0	Jan M.
42	0	Jeffrey T.
43	0	Marcus S.
44	0	Zhangying
45	0	Miriam S.
46	0	Xiaoqi
47	0	Rachel H.
48	0	Bao Bin
49	0	Ling Chen
50	0	Russell V.
51	0	Hexiang

Questions 2 and 3:

For Groundhog Day, Nadir Y., Craig W., and Larry A. picked A. His shadow, so Todd C. could claim the top spot on the leaderboard by himself if Punxatawney Phil predicts an early spring. Later that same day is the Super Bowl, where Craig W. picked the Denver Broncos to win while Todd C., Nadir Y., and Larry A. picked the Seattle Seahawks. The Denver Broncos are slight favorites to win right now, but that might change if cold weather is in the forecast. Stay tuned for the thrilling continuation!