M5 conference

6-7 December 2021

Tribeca Rooftop, NYC

The findings of the M5 Competition, one of the largest forecasting competitions of all time, were presented and analysed at length over the course of the two-day M5 Conference. In this respect, the Conference elaborated on the winning methods, their practical applications and broader implications, as well as how they can benefit business and other organizations.

The M5 was one of the biggest and most ambitious of all M Competitions to date. It ran from 2 March to 30 June 2020 and differed from the previous four ones in six important ways, some of which were suggested by the discussants of the M4 Competition.

The competition was a huge success with over 100,000 entries from forecasters from over 100 counties competing for the $100,000 in cash prizes. The Accuracy Challenge currently stands as Kaggle’s 6th most popular competition of all time in terms of the number of participating teams.

M5 conference organizers

M5 competition winners & Prizes

Accuracy Challenge Winners

Prize Winner
1st Prize YeonJun In, Senior Undergraduate, Kyung Hee University, South Korea
2nd Prize Matthias Anderer, Matthias Anderer GmbH, Germany
3nd Prize Sihyeon Seong and Yunho Jeon, MOFL Inc., South Korea

Uncertainty Challenge Winners

Prize Winner
1st Prize David Lander, Northquay and Russ Wolfinger, SAS, USA
2nd Prize Nikolay Mamonov, GoodsForecast, Russia
3rd Prize  Ioannis Nassios, Nodalpoint, Greece

Prizes

There were 12 major prizes awarded to the winners of the M5 Competition, which were further distributed among the participants based on the hierarchical levels that their forecasts exceled and (ii) the quantiles of the uncertainty distribution that were better captured. The Prizes were awarded during our M5 Virtual  Award Ceremony.

The total of the $100,000 prize money were distributed equally between the Forecasting and Uncertainty M5 competition as follows:

Prize ID Prize Amount
1A Most accurate point forecast $25,000
2A Second most accurate point forecast $10,000
3A Third most accurate point forecast $5,000
4A Fourth most accurate point forecast $3,000
5A Fifth most accurate point forecast $2,000
6A Most accurate student point forecasts $5,000
Total: M5 Forecasting Competition – Point Forecasts $50,000
1B Most precise estimation of the uncertainty distribution $25,000
2B Second most precise estimation of the uncertainty distribution $10,000
3B Third most precise estimation of the uncertainty distribution $5,000
4B Fourth most precise estimation of the uncertainty distribution $3,000
5B Fifth most precise estimation of the uncertainty distribution $2,000
6B Most precise student estimation of the uncertainty distribution $5,000
Total: M5 Forecasting Competition – Uncertainty Distribution $50,000
Total: M5 Competition $100,000

THE M5 CONFERENCE agenda:

ADVANCES IN FORECASTING

9:30am – 10:00am Welcome / Opening Remarks

  • Prof. Maria Michailidis, Director of the Makridakis Open Forecasting Center (MOFC), University of Nicosia  
  • Mr. Antonis Polemitis, CEO of the University of Nicosia
  • Prof. Anil Gaba, The ORPAR chaired Professor of Risk Management Academic Director, Centre for Decision Making and Risk Analysis, INSEAD
  • Prof. Spyros Makridakis, Founder of the Makridakis Open Forecasting Center, MOFC & Director of the Institute For the Future,
    University of Nicosia
10:00am – 10:30am Keynote Address
Forecasting and the Covid-19 pandemic

  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York University
10:30am – 11:00am The Role of Judgment in Forecasting

  • Dan Goldstein, Microsoft
11:00am – 11:10am Break
11:10am – 11:40am A Collaborative and Market-based View of the Future of Forecasting

  • Pierre Pinson, Technical University of Denmark & Editor-in Chief IJF
11:40am – 12:10pm My New Forecasting Projects at Facebook 

  • Slawek Smyl, Facebook
12:10pm – 1:00pm Break
1:00pm – 1:50pm Assesment of Uncertainly for Decision-Making

  • Anil Gaba, INSEAD | Robert L. Winkler, Duke University
1:50pm – 2:20pm The Most Precise Uncertainly M5 Methods. Summary of Findings

  • Evangelos Spiliotis, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)
2:20pm – 2:40pm The Role of Uncertainty in Supply Chain: Lessons from the M5 Competition

  • Joannes Vermorel, Lokad
2:40pm – 2:50pm Break
2:50pm – 3:20pm An Engineering Solution to the Problem of Defining Time-Series Anomaly

  • Peter Cotton, Intech Investments
3:20pm – 3:50pm Judgmental Forecasts and Judgmental Adjustments to Statistical/ML Forecasts

  • Paul Goodwin, University of Bath
3:50pm – 4:30pm Panel Discussion: Expanding the Use of Systematic Forecasting in Organizations and Improving its Value: The UFO Challenge

  • Fotios Petropoulos, University of Bath
  • Ellen Bonnell, TrendSavants
  • Yael Grushka-Cockayne, University of Virginia
  • Jim Hoover, University of Florida

9:00am – 9:10am

Opening Remarks

  • Prof. Maria Michailidis, Director of the Makridakis Open Forecasting Center (MOFC),University of Nicosia
9:10am – 9:40am

Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?

  • Addison Howard, Google Cloud AI
9:40am – 10:10am

Keynote Address
The Changing Role of Forecasting in the Age of Cloud Computing

  • Chris Fry, Google
10:10am – 10:20am Break
10:20am – 11:20am

The Most Accurate M5 Accuracy Methods
Summary of findings:

  • Enno Siemsen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • YeonJun In, Kyung Hee University South Korea (KHU), Winner of the Accuracy challenge, M5 Competition 
  • Sihyeon Seong & Yunho Jeon, MOFL Inc., South Korea, Third winner of the Accuracy challenge, M5 Competition 
11:20am – 11:40am

The Value and Applicability of the M5 Competition

  • Jonathon Karelse, NorthFind Management
11:40am – 12:10pm

Applicability of the M5 to Forecasting at Walmart

  • John Bowman, Walmart
12:10am – 12:40pm

Forecasts that Users Trust: Lessons Learned from a Large Scale Demand Forecasting Project

  • Mahdi Yousefi, Target
12:40pm – 1:00pm Break
1:00pm – 1:30pm

Deep Probabilistic Forecasting

  • Tim Januschowski, Amazon AI Labs
1:30pm – 2:00pm

M5 Competition: How Organizations can Benefit from its Findings

  • Mike Gilliland, SAS
2:00pm – 2:30pm

The Past and Future of Forecasting Competitions and the Forthcoming M6 Competition

  • Prof. Spyros Makridakis, Founder of the Makridakis Open Forecasting Center, MOFC & Director of the Institute For the Future,
    University of Nicosia

M5 Virtual Award Ceremony

The M5 Forecasting Competition ended on the 30 of June, with an amazing number of around 100,000 submissions from more than 100 countries , making it one of the largest of its kind and the fourth most popular Kaggle competition ever.

The M5 Virtual Award Ceremony took place online, on 29 October 2020, at 07:00 p.m (GMT+3 ).