Institute For the Future
M-competitions
M competitions
MOFC is known worldwide for organizing and running “The Makridakis Competitions” (also known as the M Competitions). These are a series of open challenges aimed at improving the theory and practice of forecasting conducted for the last 42 years by forecasting researcher Prof. Spyros Makridakis, intending to evaluate and compare the accuracy of different forecasting methods. The M Competitions have attracted great interest, from both academics and practitioners, by providing objective evidence of the most appropriate way of forecasting and estimating uncertainty.
The M Competitions are empirical studies that compare the performance of a large number of major time series methods, using recognized experts who provide the forecasts for their method of expertise. Once the forecasts from each expert have been obtained, they are evaluated and compared with those from other experts as well as simple benchmark methods. Forecasting competitions assure objectivity while also guaranteeing expert knowledge.
M6 Competition
The M6 competition, was similar to the previous five Makridakis competitions in its focus on forecasts of stock price (returns) and risk. However, this iteration of the competition focuses equally on investment decisions made based on the use of said forecasts. Competition inputs made by participants were designed to empirically allow the testing of the factors that most affect financial returns.
M5 Competition
The M5 Competition ran from 2 March to 30 June 2020. It differed from the previous four ones in six important ways, some of which were suggested by the discussants of the M4 Competition.
M4 Competition
The fourth competition, M4, started on 1 January 2018 and ended in 31 May 2018.
The M4 extended and replicated the results of the previous three competitions, using an extended and diverse set of time series to identify the most accurate forecasting method(s) for different types of predictions.
M3 Competition
The third Makridakis Competition or M3 Competition (Makridakis and Hibon, 2000), was intended to both replicate and extend the features of the M and M2 Competitions, through the inclusion of more methods and participants (particularly researchers in the area of neural networks) and more time series. A total of 3003-time series was used.
M2 Competition
The second competition, or M2 Competition (Makridakis et al., 1993), was conducted on a grander scale. A call to participate was published in the International Journal of Forecasting, announcements were made in the International Symposium of Forecasting, and a written invitation was sent to all known experts on the various time series methods.
M1 Competition
First Makridakis Competition or M Competition as known in the forecasting literature, was held in 1982 and used 1001 time series and 15 forecasting methods (with another nine variations of those methods included).
M Conference series
The Makridakis Open Forecasting Center (MOFC) conducts conferences after the end of each M competition with the latest being “The Future of Forecasting and the M6 Competition, Conference”