Punditude Glossary

Due Date: An approximate date on which a Prediction is expected to be resolved.

Featured Prediction: A Prediction created by an Admin which will appear on the punditude.com home page on the date on which it's featured. To see recent Featured Predictions, look for the link below the day's Featured Prediction on the home page.

Hit: A Prediction that has been resolved in agreement with your Position on it; i.e., you were correct.

Member Level: Not including Admins, there are 6 possible user levels ranging from Rookie to Diamond. This designation is based solely on the number of Positions taken by a User (or Pundit). Thresholds are: Bronze - 20, Silver - 100, Gold - 500, Platinum - 1000, and Diamond - 5000.

Miss: A Prediction that has not been resolved in agreement with your Position on it; i.e., you were incorrect.

Pending: One of several possible statuses for a Prediction. A status of Pending means a Prediction has been made, but has not yet been resolved.

Position: Any member can take a Position on any existing unresolved Prediction. When you indicate that you "Agree" or "Disagree" with a Prediction, you have taken a Position on it. It can also be said that by taking a Position, you have "made a prediction."

Prediction: This is the main unit of the Punditude experience. Simply put, a Prediction is a statement about future events. It has certain objective attributes like Status and Resolution. Many people (Users or Pundits) can take a Position on the same Prediction. At this time, Users cannot create their own Predictions.

Pundit: A person whose job is to authoritatively express opinions and make predictions, usually in the areas of politics and current events. Some Pundits are journalists, some are entertainers. They are also known as "commentators" and "talking heads". At punditude.com, we track the accuracy of both professional Pundits as well as our registered members, known as Users.

PunditScore: A single number on a scale of 0-1000 which summarizes an individual's performance at punditude.com. The PunditScore is the result of our proprietary algorithm which incorporates several factors, most importantly accuracy and the length of time between establishing a Position on a Prediction, and when that Prediction is resolved. For more info see Anatomy of a PunditScore Box.

PunditScore Box: The PunditScore Box is a concise representation of a person's performance at punditude.com. For more info see Anatomy of a PunditScore Box.

Resolution: This attibute of a Prediction indicates whether the it turned out to be correct or incorrect.

Resolved: One of several possible statuses of a Prediction. A status of Resolved means the it has been possible to determine objectively whether the Prediction was correct or incorrect. A resolved Prediction always has a corresponding Resolution of "Correct" or "Incorrect". Only resolved Predictions have any impact on users' PunditScores.

Status: This attribute of a Prediction indicates whether the Prediction has been resolved. If a Prediction has not yet been resolved, you can still take a Position on it.

Unresolvable: One of several possible statuses of a Prediction. This status means it has been determined that the Prediction, for whatever reason, has no hope of ever being definitively resolved as either correct or incorrect. This often occurs when a premise or assumption of the Prediction turns out to be false.

User: A registered member of punditude.com, as opposed to a professional Pundit

Type: Either a Pundit or a User. In some contexts, e.g., the listing of a Prediction's Positions, it is useful to distinguish between the two since both Users and Pundits can take individual Positions on the same Prediction. In this context, you can sort the Position table by Type, moving all the Pundits to the top if desired.