Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

2010 Prediction Scorecard

Posted from Culver City, California at 5:50 pm, January 2nd, 2011

Following a massive number of incorrect predictions for 2009, here’s the wrap-up of my predictions for 2010; clearly no one will ever mistake me for Nostradamus.

  1. SpaceX will launch their Falcon 9 rocket successfully in March or April and will have two successful launches before year end.

    The rocket launched successfully in June, and a second launch took place in December. This is a big deal for anyone interested in space, and, even though I was off by a month on the launch date, this scores as a correct prediction since I’m doing the scoring.

  2. Despite Democrats losing their 60th Senate seat in the Massachusetts special election there will still be some sort of health care bill passed this year.

    When this prediction was made there was near universal agreement that the bill was dead, yet it passed about a month later. Two out of two so far for the prediction game, but it’s all downhill from here.

  3. Tiger Woods will be golfing again in time for the Masters, will win at least one major championship, and at least five tournaments.

    He was back for the Masters, then didn’t win a single tournament. Historically I think my record for sports-related predictions stands at something like zero-for-ten…

  4. The iPhone is going to be available from carriers besides AT&T by mid-year.

    Everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times says this is happening in early 2011, but that doesn’t make my prediction any less wrong.

  5. The stock market will end the year around 11,500.

    Another rare correct prediction. It rose from about 10,200 at the beginning of the year to close at 11,577 at the end of the year.

  6. NASA’s ARES rocket program will be canceled or scaled back to the point where it will no longer be a shuttle replacement.

    The program has effectively been canceled, although budget wrangling is keeping some aspects of it alive. While this scores as a correct prediction, in fairness anyone who is a big space dork would see this as a very safe prediction given the public pronouncements prior to the actual cancellation.

  7. The Beatles and Garth Brooks will start selling their music on iTunes.

    The Beatles came through for me, but Garth held out.

  8. The Browns will finish at .500 or better.

    I don’t want to talk about this one.

  9. I’m going to run a marathon.

    Nope, didn’t happen. 2011 may be a different story though.

  10. The 2010 elections won’t change Congress significantly… I’ll say the Democrats will have 57 Senate seats (plus-or-minus one) and 240 House members (plus-or-minus five) when it’s all over.

    This prediction was spectacularly wrong. Democrats now have 53 Senate seats and 193 House seats, so I was only off by… A LOT.

  11. Tesla will IPO and announce the opening of a plant in Downey. The plant will break ground, but full Model-S production will slip from 2011 to 2012.

    They did do a very successful IPO, and the Model-S has slipped to 2012, but the new plant will be in Fremont. Two out of three ain’t bad.

  12. Despite recent protests, the political situation in Iran won’t change in 2010.

    …and it hasn’t changed. Things have been relatively quiet in that corner of the world after a very noisy 2009.

  13. Google will partner with someone to ship a low-cost, Google branded PC running Google apps and the Google operating system.

    This is a prediction that probably should have waited until 2012. Oops.

  14. Apple will be on the verge of announcing an Apple television product.

    Another prediction that would have made a lot more sense for 2012. When they do finally announce it I’m definitely going to want one.

  15. China will announce plans to sell cars abroad.

    Although Jane says China is already selling cars in Asian markets, I’ll be surprised to see them in the US for another 2-4 years. My prediction batting average continues to fall into the “scary bad” range.

  16. It will be another bad hurricane year.

    While 2010 tied for the third most named storms and second most hurricanes in history, they mostly stayed out to sea or weren’t very severe when they did make landfall. Given the potential for damage, this is actually a good one to be wrong about, even if it is another blemish on an otherwise ugly prediction scorecard.

  17. I will make at least two journal entries a month.

    Nailed it! That’s right, for every month of 2010 there were at least two entries in the journal, even if many of them did come on one of the last days of the month.

The game will continue with predictions for 2011 coming soon, and the comments link is there for anyone who wants to join in the pain fun.

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