2014 Oscars - How did Inkling do?

The Oscars are over, the Hollywood elite are home in their mansions nursing their hangovers and taking an in-house spa day, and the rest of us are left to gossip about the highlights and lowlights of the show last night.

With that in mind, let's see how Inkling did in its predictions.

Of the 18 categories we reported on last night before the show started, Inkling correctly predicted 17 of them for a 94% hit rate. The one miss? Original Song. Damn.

Kudos to all those who participated and made predictions. Given these are crowdsourced predictions, we're nothing without you. :)

2014 Oscar Prediction Guide

The Oscars begin shortly and here's Inkling's predictions. Each winner Inkling predicted has the highest chance of winning among its fellow nominees in the category. Remember, we deal in probabilities, so all we're telling you is the chance a nominee will win, like when the weather man tells you there's a 70% chance of rain, there's a 30% chance it won't rain!

Read on after the predictions for a little more about how to interpret these results and how we calculate them.

Alright, on to the predictions:

Which film will win the most Oscars?
Gravity (75% chance)

Best Picture
12 Years a Slave (76% chance)

Best Actress 
Cate Blanchett (82% chance)

Best Actor
Matthew McConaughey (55% chance)

Supporting Actress
Lupita Nyong'o (68% chance)

Supporting Actor
Jared Leto (76% chance)

Original Screenplay
Her (48% chance)

Adapted Screenplay
12 Years a Slave (80% chance)

Visual Effects
Gravity (80% chance)

Sound Mixing
Gravity (39% chance)

Sound Editing
Gravity (38% chance)

Original Song
Happy (53% chance)

Original Score
Gravity (31% chance)

Makeup and Hair Styling
Dallas Buyers Club (51% chance)

Foreign Language Film
The Great Beauty (57% chance)

Best Director
Gravity (53% chance)

Costume Design
The Great Gatsby (34% chance)

Cinematography 
Gravity (63% chance)

Animated Feature Film
Frozen (92% chance)


To see details about each prediction, like what chances the other nominees have, go here: http://home.inklingmarkets.com/markets?term=oscar

As you can see, sometimes there is a strong signal from people making predictions when they think they know who the winner will be, i.e. Animated Feature Film (Frozen 92%) or Best Actress (Cate Blanchett 82%) - but other times there isn't much of a signal at all (costume design, original score, sound editing, etc.) This lack of a signal can be for two reasons. First, sometimes there just aren't that many predictions made so the chances don't move very much from where they started (evenly split up among however many nominees there are, i.e. 5 nominees = 20% chance each). But other time no strong signal can mean disagreement among people about what the outcome will be. For Original Screenplay, for example, there's a 48% chance "Her" will win. But this was after 36 predictions. In contrast, there were only 18 predictions made in the Adapted Screenplay category, but those 18 predictions amounted to an 80% chance "12 Years a Slave" would win, meaning there was almost unanimous opinion among those who made the predictions. "Her" was a more controversial pick in that category.

If you have more questions about how this all works, find us on twitter at @inklinghq.

Enjoy the show tonight!