What are the most difficult things to predict, among these 19 challenges?

Mon 20 Aug 2012 - 9:03

Please share your opinion and let us know how to make better predictions for the following problems. Also how do you define better?

Earthquake time and intensity forecasts
Solar flares time and intensity forecasts
Stock market prices for individual stocks or indexes, buy/sell signals
Efficiency of new pharma drugs (in terms of sales, or in terms of health improvement)
Weather forecasts in UK, the NorthWest or other challenging locales
Bankruptcy prediction
Econometric: how to predict the success of a new immigration policy, or a new tax regulation, or a new law to stop drug abuse or crime
Asteroid collisions with earth
Early detection of a pandemic
Chance for a borrower to repay her loan
Terrorist attacks
Chance of a 5 or 10 or 20-year survival for a particular person
Spam detection
Bogus reviews detection
Chance for an ad to result in a sale
Risk of car accident within the next 12 months for a particular individual
Chances of succeeding at University based on high school metrics
Chances of succeeding in a job based on job interview metrics
Chances of succeeding for a start-up, if you invested $10MM in the start-up in question

http://www.analyticbridge.com/profiles/blogs/what-are-the-most-difficult-things-to-predict-among-these-19-chal