Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration

Louis Raes; [No Value] E.a.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1915006117

Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration

Louis Raes, [No Value] E.a.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

166 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

How predictable are life trajectories? We investigated this question with a scientific mass collaboration using the common task method; 160 teams built predictive models for six life outcomes using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a high-quality birth cohort study. Despite using a rich dataset and applying machine-learning methods optimized for prediction, the best predictions were not very accurate and were only slightly better than those from a simple benchmark model. Within each outcome, prediction error was strongly associated with the family being predicted and weakly associated with the technique used to generate the prediction. Overall, these results suggest practical limits to the predictability of life outcomes in some settings and illustrate the value of mass collaborations in the social sciences.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	8398-8403
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume	117
Issue number	15
Early online date	30 Mar 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915006117
Publication status	Published - Apr 2020

Keywords

Computational Social Science
Fragile Families
Machine Learning

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10.1073/pnas.1915006117Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

166 Citations
1 Erratum / corrigendum

Correction for Salganik et al., Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration
Salganik, M. J., Lundberg, I., Kindel, A. T., Ahearn, C. E., Al-Ghoneim, K., Almaatouq, A., Altschul, D. M., Brand, J. E., Carnegie, N. B., Compton, R. J., Datta, D., Davidson, T., Filippova, A., Gilroy, C., Goode, B. J., Jahani, E., Kashyap, R., Kirchner, A., McKay, S. & Morgan, A. C. & 92 others, Pentland, A., Polimis, K., Raes, L., Rigobon, D. E., Roberts, C. V., Stanescu, D. M., Suhara, Y., Usmani, A., Wang, E. H., Adem, M., Alhajri, A., AlShebli, B., Amin, R., Amos, R. B., Argyle, L. P., Baer-Bositis, L., Uchi, M. B., Chung, B.-R., Eggert, W., Faletto, G., Fan, Z.-L., Freese, J., Gadgil, T., Gagne, J., Gao, Y., Halpern-Manners, A., Hashim, S. P., Hausen, S., He, G., Higuera, K., Hogan, B., Horwitz, I. M., Hummel, L. M., Jain, N., Jin, K., Jurgens, D., Kaminski, P., Karapetyan, A., Kim, E. H., Leizman, B., Liu, N., Oser, M. M., Mack, A. E., Mahajan, M., Mandell, N., Marahrens, H., Mercado-Garcia, D., Mocz, V., Mueller-Gastell, K., Musse, A., Niu, Q., Nowak, W., Omidvar, H., Or, A., Ouyang, K., Pinto, K. M., Porter, E., Porter, K. E., Qian, C., Rauf, T., Sargsyan, A., Schaffner, T., Schnabel, L., Schonfeld, B., Sender, B., Tang, J. D., Tsurkov, E., van Loon, A., Varol, O., Wang, X., Wang, Z., Wang, J., Wang, F., Weissman, S., Whitaker, K., Wolters, M. K., Woon, W. L., Wu, J., Wu, C., Yang, K., Yin, J., Zhao, B., Zhu, C., Brooks-Gunn, J., Engelhardt, B. E., Hardt, M., Knox, D., Levy, K., Narayanan, A., Stewart, B. M., Watts, D. J. & McLanahan, S., 14 Dec 2021, In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 118, 50, 1 p., 2118703118.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Erratum / corrigendum › Scientific

Cite this

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title = "Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration",

abstract = "How predictable are life trajectories? We investigated this question with a scientific mass collaboration using the common task method; 160 teams built predictive models for six life outcomes using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a high-quality birth cohort study. Despite using a rich dataset and applying machine-learning methods optimized for prediction, the best predictions were not very accurate and were only slightly better than those from a simple benchmark model. Within each outcome, prediction error was strongly associated with the family being predicted and weakly associated with the technique used to generate the prediction. Overall, these results suggest practical limits to the predictability of life outcomes in some settings and illustrate the value of mass collaborations in the social sciences.",

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Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration

Abstract

Keywords

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Research output

Correction for Salganik et al., Measuring the predictability of life outcomes with a scientific mass collaboration

Cite this