Makridakis Competitions
The Makridakis Competitions (also known as the M Competitions) are a series of open competitions organized and led 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 various variables of interest.
The M Competitions is an empirical study that compares 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.
M1: 1982 – First competition
M2: 1993 – Second competition
M3: 2000 – Third competition
M4: 2018 – Fourth competition, running between 1 January to 31 May
M5: 2020 – Fifth competition, running between 1 February to 30 June
M6: 2022 – Sixth competition, running between February 2022 and February 2023
In his blog, Rob J. Hyndman wrote: “The “M” competitions organized by Spyros Makridakis have had an enormous influence on the field of forecasting. They focused attention on what models produced good forecasts, rather than on the mathematical properties of those models. For that, Spyros deserves congratulations for changing the landscape of forecasting research through this series of competitions.”