I 
Postcrossing!
0
We did it !
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I did guess the right day 16 days ago but I thought it would be this morning 
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It remains only to find out which postcard became the 59 millionth one.
And I missed it because of live work with letters and cards - ironic!
But seems it was still 20something …
20:52
Looks like we blinked and just missed the countdown by a few minutes… 
Here’s lucky postcard number #59,000,000:
Congratulations everyone! 
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It’s always funny when there are less than a hundred postcards to go and suddenly everything kind of slows down 
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Taiwan to Germany. Ok 
Apparently in the middle of the night is a good time for germans to regiater postcards 
okay call it a late evening.
Looking forward the next countdown 
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It will be very cool seven zeroes, five dozen countdown.
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Congratulation
A meeting card as number 59mio … I’d say it fits perfectly.
(I had a hurray at 21:06 UTC - so I came close. One day, maybe)
There are some my comments and ideas regarding Postcrossing countdowns, which we like so much.
-
A fundamental question - does the new prediction cancel the previous one?
In theory, a new prediction should cancel the previous ones. But then there will be less activity in this thread, which is not good.
And then it will not be possible to say - I called this date back in August
The goal of the countdown isn’t to be right, but to make us have fun.
Therefore, apparently, we need to take into account all the predictions of the participant in order to evaluate their diviner talent -
I like Stefan’s idea of giving predictions ~ 1,000,000 before the event, then ~ 500,000, then ~ 250,000, then ~ 100,000, then ~ 50,000, etc.
But, of course, this rule should not be strict. -
The idea of giving a prediction with an indication of the confidence interval (± something), as I do, is not quite working.
First, it is not clear what to do with this (±), especially if the next prediction is outside this interval.
Secondly, it is not clear what to count – the prediction itself or its right or left border. So I will cancel ± in the future. -
As an idea, we can evaluate the diviner talent by the following criterion:
(number of predictions) / {SUM [(error) / (distance to fact) + …]}
for all predictions of the participant excluding repeated ones, when the participant leaves their previous prediction in force.
An (error) should be understood = ABS (prediction - fact), the difference that is always with a plus sign. -
If the time is not named, but only the date, then midday of this date should be understood.
The one who get the highest score is the best Postcrossing diviner.
And if we manage to guess the countries as well, then it will be an additional bonus.
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Or we keep it the way it is - a very simple basic countdown. Anybody who wants to post the missing numbers, is welcome to do so.
Those who want to add some of their individual fun can guess day and time of the millionth number, but with no big rules or serious competiton*. Whenever, whatever, whether it’s maths or intuition or astrology. Change your guess if you feel for it.
And in the end, some can feel good about their estimates, and we all can feel about a next million of joyful little pieces sent/registered all over the world.
*unless, maybe, there is an official guessing game again for the 60th mio? (no pressure, @ana + co, 
)
Anyway - I already know what I will guess next - not because of math, but because of wishful thinking
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Of course, I agree with you, everyone can do what they want.
But in terms of predictive ability, the most valuable are more accurate hits from a longer distance and with fewer corrections. Don’t you agree?
Only what can be measured can be objectively assessed.
I have been thinking about a way to measure foresight for a long time.
And in order to understand how well my magic crystal balls work (or yours, or someone else’s), we need to understand how to calculate it.
I do not impose anything, but only set out the methodology. This may not interest Vicki (@mundoo ), but it may concern Shikai (@SkyHound ), for example.
In any case, counting or not counting is everyone’s personal business
I just outlined how this can be done.
PS And if the time is not named, but only the date, then midday of this date should be understood.
Simple works for us.
The best kind of guess 
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By the way, I tested the described above direct criterion of our prediction attempts with Stefan (@Stevyy ), and I must admit that this is a pure victory for Stefan.
Stefan got 12.31 and I got 8.98 points only.
Also, using the example of the same previous 59 million countdown, I tested an alternative criterion for assessing predictive abilities (Alt):
{SUM [(distance to fact) / (error) +…]} / (number of predictions)
It gives a similar result, but it is more volatile (gives a wider range of values). Therefore, I like the idea of the direct (non alternative) criterion more.
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