The Quizmaster's 2025 Predictions Revisited
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First published: Thursday January 1st, 2026
First published: Thursday January 1st, 2026
+50
Last January, I made my fourth annual Official Predictions™ for the coming year. Let's see how those predictions panned out.
Events rated by me as having a 80% chance or higher of occurring
Expected: 7.95
Actual: 8
99 World population increases in 2025
93 Xi still leader of China
93 Donald Trump President of the U.S. on December 31
90 The number of U.S. federal government employees decreases in 2024 (not counting military troops)
I feel pretty good about this prediction. The default expectation is that "nothing ever happens", which in this case means an ever expanding bureaucracy. But this time something actually did happen, and the federal workforce shrunk by nearly 10%.
90 Kim Jong-un still leader of North Korea
85 Vladimir Putin still President of Russia
85 The Conservative Party wins the most seats in Canadian elections
80 U.S. government deficit to GDP ratio declines (trailing three months, Dec 2025 v. Dec 2024)
The deficit declined slightly. But more important, GDP increased by a lot, especially in nominal terms. Therefore deficit to GDP had a big decline, as did debt to GDP. Yay!
80 More JetPunk quizzes taken in 2025 than 2024
80 (incomplete) Average home price in the U.S. increases during 2025 according to Zillow
Marking this as incomplete. December data has not been released and the overall gain through November was extremely close to 0%. This one could go either way.
Events rated by me as having a 50–80% chance of occurring
Expected: 6.2
Actual: 7
70 U.S. official unemployment below 5% on December 31
70 Ceasefire in the Israel/Gaza war as of December 31
70 Volodymyr Zelensky still president of Ukraine
65 Elon Musk is world's richest person on December 31
65 Ceasefire in the Ukraine/Russia war as of December 31
60 LeBron James active on an NBA roster
60 Kier Starmer still Prime Minister of the U.K.
55 There is a new oldest person in the world
R.I.P. Inah Canabarro Lucas. Long live Ethel Caterham (age 116).
55 The JetPunk daily trivia quiz is taken at least 10,000 times in a day at least once
Technically, it did happen one day due to a stats bug that caused people to retake the quiz multiple times. But that doesn't count in my book, so I'm marking this as a no. Our top day was 9,430 on October 27.
50 BlueSky traffic in December 2025 down 80% from December 2024 levels
It's hard to get exact figures. Levels of engagement appear to have fallen by a lot, but probably not by 80%.
Events rated by me as having a 20–50% chance of occurring
Expected: 2.5
Actual: 2
45 Euro worth less than $1 at end of year
35 TikTok banned for at least 90% of Americans as of December 31
30 U.S. inflation (trailing 12 months) above 5%
30 "RealID" required at U.S. airports as of December 31
Technically the RealID requirement is now law. But they aren't enforcing it at all. Ask me how I know.
25 Waymo robotaxis open to the public in Seattle as of December 31
25 (incomplete) The Trump admin makes a proposal for a manned Mars program
Marking as incomplete. I should have written this better. Trump did say he wanted to plant an American flag on Mars during his inaugural address. Furthermore, there is $1 billion in new Mars-focused funding to NASA. But there hasn't been a detailed proposal with adequate funding to get us to Mars.
20 Nvidia is world's most valuable company on December 31
20 Max Verstappen wins the F1 championship
20 Nvidia stock falls by 50% or more
Events rated by me as having a less than 20% chance of occurring
Expected: 1.71
Actual: 1
15 Detroit Lions win the Super Bowl
15 Seattle has at least one day of 100 °F or higher
15 New record set for world's heaviest pumpkin
Congrats to our new pumpkin overlord, weighing in at 2,819 pounds (1,279 kilograms)
12 Russia captures Kyiv at some point during the year
10 JetPunk is the world's largest quiz site as of December 31 according to SimilarWeb
We did slightly close the gap with the other site, but we are still behind.
10 British pound worth less than $1 at end of year
10 A Western country locks down due to bird flu
8 The world record in the marathon is broken with a time under 2 hours
7 More than 1.5 million JetPunk quizzes taken in a single day in 2025
7 China invades Taiwan mainland
7 9.0 or higher earthquake anywhere on Earth
7 Elon Musk net worth at least $1 trillion on December 31 according to Forbes
4 Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the U.S.
3 At least one Global Position System satellite is destroyed
2 Nuclear detonation kills at least 1000 people
As for Justin, guess he got with Katy Perry as a consolation prize.
'Outlok not good'
Also, very true about REAL ID not being enforced. It's pointless anyways, since all the documentation you need to get it is just standard fare for getting a regular driver's license.
What was the most popular day of the year in JetPunk in terms of takes??
But I think it was mostly luck.
:67:
Its release was delayed by the shutdown, but we got the numbers eventually.
More controversially, the unemployment rate and the consumer price index weren't published for the month of October. But we did get figures for November for both of those eventually.
Yippee - HNY Jetpunk!
PS. I think the last expected value should be 1.32.
This is true of every good economy (and every weak one). If you remove the best sector (worst sector) then the result is worse (better).
It's a universal argument to dismiss any data which you don't like.
I'd encourage you to clarify your own thinking and start making your own testable predictions with probability numbers attached. This will force you to confront why your predictions did/didn't come true, and challenge whether your beliefs are based on reason or emotion.