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Dear all, Further to earlier announcements on SIMSOC, a few people have expressed an intent to make a prediction on the outcome of the Swedish general election. We will therefore proceed with a half-day workshop on the Monday afternoon (20 August) of the Social Simulation Conference in 2018. The next step is to receive predictions, as per the rules at http://www.essa.eu.org/essa-prediction-competition-2018/ by 31 July 2018. Even if you didn't express an intent to make a prediction, you are nevertheless invited to submit your prediction and participate as a modeller in the workshop if you wish. Please email me ([log in to unmask]) your predictions as a table in the form specified in the rules linked to above by 23:59 Hawaii-Aleutian Time (UTC-10) on 31 July 2018. With best wishes, Gary Polhill P.S. Discussing prediction with some people, I have become aware that there is not a common understanding of what the term means. From my perspective, predictions can be uncertain, imprecise and wrong; an alternative view is that predictions must be certain, precise, and true. Under the latter definition, you cannot tell whether an utterance was a prediction until after the predicted event occurs, which seems odd to me, but then to those who adopt that position with respect to the conceptualizataion of prediction, my perspective doubtless also seems strange. However, just in case it is not clear, the ESSA prediction competition adopts the former sense: a prediction is simply what your model says might happen. The competition itself is, of course, less about whether we can predict the next government of Sweden, and more about what we learn from the attempt to do so. The James Hutton Institute is a Scottish charitable company limited by guarantee. Registered in Scotland No. SC374831 Registered Office: The James Hutton Institute, Invergowrie Dundee DD2 5DA. Charity No. SC041796