Patent ID: 7707062

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a processor; an input section for receiving user inputs including a request from a consumer describing one or more transactions in which said consumer may wish to engage, at least one offer from at least one potential seller of said one or more transactions, and one or more predictive assessments from predictors corresponding to said at least one offer, each said predictive assessment predicting a satisfaction said consumer will experience contingent on accepting one or more offers from said at least one potential seller; a memory for storing said user inputs including said consumer request, each said at least one offer, and each said at least one or more predictive assessments being stored in said memory; and a calculator, as executed by the processor, that retrieves data from said memory and performs processing on said data, including using said predictive assessments to calculate at least one aggregated prediction for said at least one offer, based on a prediction aggregation mechanism that includes an algorithm that simultaneously determines a collective forecast and a gain or loss of money or points for each predictor, said gain or loss depending at least in part on predictive assessments of other predictors who have earlier or are simultaneously making predictive assessments.