Patent ID: 7590554

Claim:
A forecasting process comprising: running multiple sessions of an information market including an artificial market in which financial instruments are utilized, wherein said financial instruments are traded by participants in said information market, wherein said information market is designed to elicit participant characteristics of participants; extracting said participant characteristics through an analysis of results of trading of said financial instruments by correlating observed behavior to accepted characteristic tendencies, wherein said participant characteristics include participant risk inclination and participant ability to interpret information, wherein said extracting is performed by a computer system; generating a predictive aggregation formula with adjustments for said participant characteristics, wherein said predictive aggregation formula aggregates predictive information related to said multiple sessions of said information market wherein said adjustments include individual participant predictions with exponential factoring for characteristics of said individual participants and said information market as a whole, wherein said generating a predictive aggregation formula with adjustments for said participant characteristics is performed by said computer system; performing a predictive query process in subsequent to said running multiple sessions of said information market, said predictive query process including posing a predictive query to said participants and gathering results of said predictive query, said predictive query about a probability of a future outcome occurrence associated with an uncertain situation; aggregating results of said predictive query process with adjustments for said predictive aggregation formula comprising said participant characteristics to produce an aggregated probability projection associated with said uncertain situation; and generating a forecast for said uncertain event based on said aggregated probability projection, wherein said generating said forecast for said uncertain event is performed by said computer system.