Makridakis Forecasting Competitions

The **Makridakis Competitions (M-Competitions)** are a renowned series of international forecasting contests founded by Professor Spyros Makridakis. These competitions (M, M2, M3, M4, and M5) focus on comparing and improving forecasting methods using large-scale, real-world datasets, often from business, economics, and retail. They have had major impact on the fields of statistics, machine learning, and decision science. Makridakis Competitions are not specifically designed for high school students; they are primarily targeted at researchers, data scientists, academics, and practitioners in forecasting, statistics, and machine learning. Highly advanced knowledge of programming, statistics, and time-series modeling is typically required. Motivated high school students with strong quantitative and coding skills could follow results, read related papers, and learn from the open data and methodology, but they should view the competitions more as a professional-level opportunity and learning resource rather than a typical high school competition. Benefits include exposure to state-of-the-art forecasting techniques, benchmark datasets, and influential research shaping how forecasting is used in industry and academia.