Thread:User talk:LArron/You're good at statistics/reply

That is indeed not a trivial problem: if you haven't it defined a metric beforehand you can almost always chose one which makes your prediction looking especially good.

But here is my take: if we look at the nine common names in both list, we can say:
 * 1) Andy didn't get the winner right. Generally, that is the most important part of the prediction - think of English elections, where the candidate with the relatively most votes wins. Assuming an equal probability for each one to win, it was an 11% probability for an successful prediction, much higher of course if you ignore Huntsman and other footsies...
 * 2) He got the top two right, but in the wrong order. In an English election, that would be a bad prediction but if you claim that the first two will go on with their candidacy, this could be seen as a success - a monkey had a chance of less than 3% to do so.
 * 3) But is you say: it's important to get the names of the top four candidates, as these will proceed, a monkey had a chance of 17% to be at least as good as Andy, who got three names right...

So, Andy's predictions are neither abysmal, nor splendid.