How to Price a Product Through Comparison-An Example of Buying a Horse

 Buying a horse is no joke and it takes some time to figure out what to look for and how to price compare. Price comparison allows you to take a more systematic approach. While you may trust the person selling the horse to you it is always good to know and understand price comparison. While Escanaba Polo Mallet Company is a good works business that sells mallets and hopefully equestrian gear it also seeks to raise awareness on how to run a manage a micro manufacturing business. Price comparison will be a big deal and difference in better understanding what you are willing to pay and what you are not willing to pay when selling a horse. 

Price is somewhat subjective and is influenced by the market (i.e. the need for a price comparison) and your personal preferences. So to understand how much you should pay you will need to sort of think of what you are looking for. 

Target Market Average

Having one large pool does little unless you want a very loose and inaccurate prediction of price at say 70 different horses in the area with an average price of $3K. That includes old, young, rideable, and un-rideable horses in the same pot. Thus if you break down by your target market you might get a more accurate description. So in Bella's case I might look at the Midwest any any city within 7 hours drive. People who are interested in a particular horse may be willing to travel that far. The further you go out however, the more likely your price will drop as people are naturally going to look closer to home first to reduce effort and cost.

By Target Market avg. tm = $3K

Breed Average 

Since Bella is an Arabian-Quarter Mix she isn't going to be in the general category and therefore we might consider looking at Arabians. Once we have looked at all of the Arabians listed in multiple sites from my target region we have an average of $8K. Many of the ones listed as Arabian appear to be mixed in my search so it will make it difficult to find Arabian-mix unless we clean the data by removing terms like "Thoroughbred". 

By Breed avg. b=$8K (Likely a little lower)

It is important to remember that people don't have the time to widdle down to a finite category unless they are in the high end "horse trading" business. Most people want to give horses to their kids, take classes, have a farm, etc... Thus, they may be interested in Bella the Arabian-Quarter mix or they may be equally willing to pick another breed for pleasure riding purposes. So you will need to price based on the functional value of competing categories. For example, Bella would have to be priced in a way that is not too much over, or too much under what the average person is willing to pay to own a horse (unless you are in a specialized market).

Training

What I also noticed from the listing sites that there are difference is price for training. Those horses that have a lot of training and functioned in a competitive capacity are worth more than those who are only partially trained. Bella has had professional training and regular riding but hasn't competed much. The plan was to compete with her this coming year. Yet all of the ground work is mastered which makes her a good ride for most people and she also has the foundation to be competitive in hunting, barrels, etc... So the higher trained horses are 10K+ while the lower trained horses are around 2K. In this case I might place Bella in the 6-7K range. She would appeal to someone who wants to ride pleasure but also perhaps move into competition as well.

By training average Low Range Training LRT = $2K and average High Range Training HRT= $6.5K

Other Differentiation

You can choose whatever differentiation and factors that you want.  The problem you will face is that not all of the data is available. If you were a serious horse hunter you would look at all of the different factors and narrow yourself down to a few in your region you would seriously consider. Eventually, it will make no sense to break down the categories any more. There simply isn't enough informational value learned from the exercise. 

What is Bella Worth on the Market?

We have a range that would work when we consider our target market $3K , breed $8K, and training 6.5K. This is where one has to use their strategy. I'm focusing on the younger rider that wants to do some competing but still needs to work with the horse a little to find their particular groove. I would put this value around $6K. If I was going for a different marketing I would have a price based on the needs of that market. 

$6K isn't our final answer.....

4 P's Product, Price, Place Promotion

Before we list Bella for the wrong price lets weigh and balance against the 4 P's Product, Price, Place Promotion. 

Product: 8 Year Old Mare Arabian Quarter, Trained, Ready-to-Ride, w/ Performance Potential.

Place: Markets that are within 6 hours drive. (I would discount our $6K by at least $1K for people who are driving. The value declines the longer they have to put effort, gas, etc... into it. So people who want to buy Bella might get a $1 K discount at time of purchase if they are over 2 hours drive away. It is hoped the incentive raises the value.

Promotion: The location is dependent on our market but in Bella's case it will be online forums as the easiest way to reach potential customers as well as local Word-of-Mouth. Bella is well liked at the stalls and there is some interest in her as she is gentle for children and still able to jump and canter making Word-of_Mouth WOM likely.

Price:

If we do a little calculation we will find........

$6K -1K (driving discount)=$5K

Our competitive price for Bella based on her offerings and worth is $5K. That price would not be out of the reach of many of the casual riders and might be just under the starting level for competitive horses. Thus, if someone want to buy for casual riding they could or one could buy to train for competition. It allows us to maximize our customer base by being close to both by understanding your product. The goal is to increase the likelihood of sales while if we raised the price we would have less sales but more profits (scarcity and value).

Trust as Essential to Sales

There is one more value component I would like to discuss and that is "trust".  People want to trust that the information on the product they are considering to buy as worthwhile. Thus, being open to phone calls and allowing interested parties to discuss issues with the trainer is helpful. They can ask direct questions and obtain direct responses. 

Even with an informative and positive conversation it can be difficult to trust if you have to travel or pay for a horse that may have problems a few weeks down the road. They call it "horse trading" for a reason and some of the people are not honest. I build my reputation as much as possible on being honest; even when its not in my best interest to do so. So in this case I might offer a type of guarantee. 

That guarantee would come in the form of a Health Certificate from our local veterinarian. Once the potential buyer shows interest and is willing to put down a $200 deposit I will obtain a health certificate. If they fail then I eat the cost, if the horse has a positive evaluation and the buyer purchases the horse it is paid for, but if it receives a positive certificate the buyer backs out I keep the $200. 

 Based on our very simplified quick price comparison expect to pay $2-4K for a pleasure horse you can ride right away and over $8K for a horse you could use for competition. Bell is in between those ranges and would have a fair market value of somewhere around $5K  (that is assuming I'm not missing something).

Bella 

• Arabian-Quarter Mix
• 8 Years Old
• Professional Training-Starting Competition
• Easy to Ride for Beginner-Intermediate
• Light to Touch
• Western
• Talk with Trainer
• $6K -$1K (For people traveling over 100 miles).
• Health Certificate Evaluation with $200 Deposit (Optional if Both Parties Want or You can Just Make Purchase) Come and Try Her
• Murad 619-540-0501 escanabapolomalletcompany@gmail.com

A video I played with and created. I was actually doing it for something else but thought it turned out well. Cost me like $3.99 at ClipChamp. Not bad.

President Trump Signs Second Peace Deal-Peace is a Process!

President trump signed the second peace deal in an effort to reduce conflict and improve trade. I'm reading the Peace to Prosperity and trying to digest the specifics of the plan and its long-term feasibility. There appears to be a political and economic components to the approach that seeks to create improved normalization of relationships through regional engagement and local development. I wanted to better understand the plan and its ramifications on economic and geopolitical concerns so here is what I found....

On the economic side the plan seeks to open "...the West Bank and Gaza to regional and global markets." The overall strategy appears to be that if we improve the economic market of the Palestinians we can create a more viable state with positive economic engagement. As a process it will require some basic level of agreement and then both sides moving toward market reforms that impact Gaza's capacity provide for its people. 

I can say that one of the things the Palestinians suffer from is poverty. Any time we can raise people from poverty into full economic engagement we will also encourage more pro-business and pro-social viewpoints. Discrimination is reduced where opportunities are increased. If Palestinians are able to raise the fundamentals of their economic system and their educational outputs they may find their environment shift positively as new elemental foundations adjust. 

The report goes on to say...."This part of the plan will create a business environment that provides investors with confidence that their assets will be secure by improving property rights, the rule of law, fiscal sustainability, capital markets, and anti-corruption policies."

In order to have a viable economy there will need to be some things that ensure there is basic trust in the economy and the governance of it. It is important to remember that investors want guarantees that they are not going to lose their money if political winds change and in turn writing such issues into the treaties helps to better create an investment climate. Without a strong investment environment you won't have investments and you won't have economic growth and that will likely stump the viability of Palestinian hopes. 

There are other parts of the plan that have benefits as well such as infrastructure improvements, private sector growth, and improve regional economic cooperation. Fundamentally I couldn't disagree with the basics of what they are trying to propose. Since the specifics are highly dependent on the knowledge and awareness of specific application I will leave my opinions of the details alone not something I want to put my fingers in as it will be moving water until implementation.

There is also the social side in the sense that there is some help for job employment and quality of life improvements. Jobs are essential to any global economic engagement and quality of life helps to alleviate poverty. People in that community suffered for a long time and while there is likely to be no perfect solution this is one peace deal they should seriously consider. 

 What we also find is that governance needs additional strengthening if it is going to be able to function within a global economy with larger businesses. It also must be responsive to its citizens needs as much as possible if people are going to feel as though they are part of the system and have a stake in it. It was my understanding that the government was relatively weak and that may be one of the contributing factors in slower development. 

I understand that there will be people who really disagree with the Peace Deal and are likely to be upset about it but I'm not sure there is at this moment in history a better option. There is a need to develop a strong independent state that has the capacity to encourage growth and development. Changing the environment, updating skills, encouraging investment, and engaging with the international community are essential. I can't say what will happen now but I suspect that a number of countries will continue to seek normalization for a long stemming conflict. Solving this problem in a way that is at least satisfactorily to most of the members means that we will reduce Middle East tensions by a great deal as this is one of the essential problems often cited in the discussion of cultural/religious differences. 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/peacetoprosperity/

Conference: Promoting Global Competitiveness, Innovation, and Sustainability

 This blog has a lot to do with academic life and seeks to support positive change and critical thinking. I used to post conferences from time to time and I think it may have been a positive benefit. So I'm going to see if my readers like the business conferences or not. 

2020 ORLANDO International Academic Conference on Business, Economics, Finance, and Accounting

Theme: Promoting Global Competitiveness, Innovation, and Sustainability

Organized by International Association of Applied Business Research - IAABR

DATES: OCTOBER 10 - 11, 2020
PLACE: SpringHill Suites by Marriott Orlando Lake Buena Vista in the Marriott Village
8601 Vineland Avenue, Orlando, Florida, USA

Special discounted rates are still available for the participants in 2020 Orlando Conference on Business, Economics, Finance, and Accounting. Here is the link where the conference participants may book their reservations at the special deeply discounted conference rates of $89/ night per room: https://book.passkey.com/e/50108137. Please note that special rate reservations must be made by SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 (the cutoff date), or until there are rooms available at the negotiated discounted rates.

DEADLINES:

FULL PAPERS - SEPTEMBER 26, 2020. All full-paper submissions will be reviewed for publication in one of the double-blind, peer-refereed Journals Sponsoring the 2020 ORLANDO Conference on Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting or the refereed Conference Proceedings with ISBN number. The authors of these articles will receive their publications in person while still attending the IAABR Conference in Orlando (one copy per a registered participant will be provided free of charge).

ABSTRACTS - SEPTEMBER 28, 2020. The authors of all accepted abstracts will have the chance to PRESENT THEIR RESEARCH IN PROGRESS at the Orlando Conference which will also give them the OPPORTUNITY to submit their COMPLETED PAPERS by FEBRUARY 15th, 2021, in order to be considered for a journal publication.

REGULAR REGISTRATION DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

The regular registration fee is $350 (the reduced registration fee for virtual participants via Skype is $300, and the special student fee is $285). The regular registration fee includes: 1) the popular IAABR 2 FOR 1 ADVANTAGE - 2 OPPORTUNITIES: an OPPORTUNITY to PUBLISH your accepted paper or abstract in a PEER-REFEREED PUBLICATION with ISSN or ISBN number issued by the Library of the Congress + an OPPORTUNITY to PRESENT the results of your work at an INTERNATIONAL FORUM for 1 LOW FEE; 2) one printed issue of the journal or Proceedings CD containing your paper; 3) an Official Certificate for International Conference participation; 4) the Conference Luncheon, Receptions, Coffee Breaks and Keynote Address; 5) Attending all Conference sessions and symposia; 6) Attending all Social and Networking events; 7) Listing of your presentation in the Official Conference Program; 8) Opportunity to Explore and Enjoy the Disney World parks, SeaWorld, Universal Orlando, and the nearby Atlantic Coast!

Our ORLANDO Conference is for people, who want to participate in a major international forum, get published, network with colleagues from many countries and sharing similar or complementary interests, and to have fun in one of the most exciting cities in the USA, known worldwide for its Disney World parks, SeaWorld, Universal Orlando, and many other attractions!

Papers related to all areas of Accounting, Banking, Business Ethics, Communication and Media, e-Business, e-Learning, Economics, Education, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Globalization, Human Resources, Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity, Law and Legal Studies, Leadership, Logistics, Management, Marketing, Political Science, Psychology, Security Studies, Social Sciences, Social Work, and Sustainable Development are invited to this international conference, which is expected to be attended by authors from nearly all parts of the World. People without papers can also participate in this conference, and they are invited to serve as session chairs or discussants, as well as informal contributors to the academic quality of this international event.

Journals Sponsoring the 2020 ORLANDO International Academic Conference:
- Journal of Strategic and International Studies (JSIS)
- Journal of Organizational Advancement, Strategic and Institutional Studies (JOASIS)
- Journal of Advancements in Applied of Business Research (JAABR)
- Journal of Advancements in Economics, Finance and Accounting (JAEFA)
- Journal of Psychology and Social Studies (JPSS)

To submit your full paper or abstract, please email it as an attachment (acceptable formats are .doc and .docx) to GLOBAL@IAABR.COM (please put "ORLANDO CONFERENCE" in the subject line of your message). All submissions will be double blind peer-refereed by members of the Conference Review Committee.

Authors, who CANNOT travel to Orlando for visa or other reasons, may PARTICIPATE VIRTUALLY in the conference, and these authors will have the same publication opportunities, as the regular conference presenters.

For inquiries, please contact the Conference Organizing Committee via ADMIN@IAABR.com or visit our Website: www.IAABR.com

Conference Organizing Committee, 2020 Orlando International Academic Conference on Business, Economics, Finance, and Accounting

Stay Focused During Multiple Demands-Busy is NOT Effective

In life and business we often have multiple things going on at the same time and it can be confusing to focus our efforts in the mix of competing demands. Like many of you, I have been in that situation and find myself pulled in multiple directions for a day or two. That is normal. One way to limit your stress is to list in your mind what is absolutely essential for that day and then think of a bonus everything else that also gets done. Try not to be everything to everyone, just focus on what is the most absolutely necessary for that day and add to it once your core objectives are completed. 

We often think that the more we do and the harder we work is going to make us productive. I've see it...people in places I've worked....look busy and hurried to show their worth to society. Thus, how you view yourself is an important consideration in the overall process of getting to understand why you are running like a hamster on a hamster will. 

Once you realized that your essential skills lay in certain areas and your value as a while person has little or nothing to do with the amount of "busy work" you put in your work life you will have a better grasp of what is important and what isn't. 

Thus...when you are feeling stressed with all the things you do make three quick assessments:

1. What MUST I get done today?

2. Is it essential or is does it relate to my personal beliefs about my own value. 

3. Is there a way to delegate some of the tasks to focus on my essential strengths. 

Yikes! I forgot about working toward your strengths. Some people are good at some things and some people are good at other things. To maximize our time we may want to consider focusing on those things we do well. That doesn't mean ignoring and not understanding other non-essential tasks. What it does mean is that after we understand and have working knowledge of those tasks we should reduce, delegate, and 3rd party our non-essential tasks and skills that we are not good at or waste our time doing. 

That brings up the point on specialization. Much of our economy has moved into specialization as a method focus on skill development. It is true that if you want to be successful you will want to be the best at something. While being good at most things is helpful there is much more benefit to the modern economy to be the best in your field. Thus, specialization works best in a wider context of skills to draw on. 

We know that things aren't going to work out as planned. Recently, I was moving some stuff and trying to get coordinated in a workshop. There was so much to do that it could be difficult to get it all done. Then I said to myself, "Why are you doing things that aren't needed at the moment?" What I found was that essential and non-essential tasks are all jumbled up because of the way we think and therefore we can break off the non-essential parts to focus on whats important, ensure its not personality driven, and that maximizes our potential.

Our First Day of Ship Hunting the "Wisconsin" Big Bay De Noc-Went Pretty Well

12' rudder CC Hand

Day 1 of our search for a lost shipwreck went better than expected. We are on the hunt for Queen City that went down near For River over a century ago. We went out and practiced on two ships the C.C. Hand and the "Wisconsin". The first ship we dove to try out some equipment and learn to coordinated while the second ship is much smaller and has never been registered. The marine archaeologist asked us to film the "Wisconsin" so he could get some ideas of the era as the name doesn't appear to be correct and/or reflective of the name locals were using. 

The first ship is well known called the C.C.Hand that went down with 24K tons of soft coal from Cleveland to Chicago in 1914. The ship hit ground while trying to navigate fog and was able to peel itself off the island. However, when eating dinner the ship started to smoke and caught fire. You can read more about it HERE. Everyone was evacuated. As an important side note the underlining shipping structures are some of the reasons why Delta County could have high value as a centralized shipping area.

The Great Lakes, and Delta County in particular, have an abundance of prior discovered and still undiscovered ship wrecks. Our team is chasing the Queen City. The diving is great and the water is often clear. There are plenty of places to explore and one is unlikely to run out of ships. Rumor has it that there is gold ingots from the Civil War near poverty Island from a ship called the Griffin. That would be a major find but unfortunately that ship is not our priority but I certainly would like to some day look for it. 

In our case, the gold is finding artifacts we can send to the local museums. I have been looking at some of the laws and rules around discovering artifacts on the Michigan Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) website. It appears that we have no issues with just discovery but once we do discover the ship we can record it and then send in to the State of Michigan for an extraction permit. As our plan is to donate to a local historical society and are working with an archaeologist who once worked for one of the states archaeologist services I suspect we will be considered qualified.

Part 761 and the Federal Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 provide necessary and sufficient statutory authority. Part 761 prohibits the removal, alteration and destruction of abandoned property which is in, on, under, or over the bottomlands of the Great Lakes including those within a Great Lakes underwater preserve without a permit issued by representatives of the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Each permit may contain appropriate conditions. Engaging in activities prohibited under Part 761 are crimes. A person seeking a permit must complete and file a prescribed application form (see below). 

The first ship was the CC Hand and the second one was dubbed by a few locals who knew about it the "Wisconsin". It looks about 75 feet long smashed on the rock. It has square nails and appears to be part metal and part wood which would make me think it was a private yacht that eventually smashed on the rocks. My suspicion is that it was from the 1920's and was seeking safe harbor in the small marinas of the area and it ran aground and broke up. When we saw it, it was pretty broke up and scattered. When I went past the stern, beyond what you would normally go, I kept finding ship parts everywhere. Didn't find a name but I would like to go back in the summer and just take closer look at everything. 

I haven't shared the video because I plan on making a high quality documentation of the day but it will take some time to edit and put it together. Our goal is to attract a few sponsors and some marketing interest for the area.

Economic Recovery-Are My Projections Still on Track?

The economy is showing some signs of improvement through the jobs report and economic activities. I'm reading the Reuters article U.S. economy is improving, weeks before the election. Will Trump benefit? by Ann Saphire and I thinking about whether I'm going to be close in my original projects. It is great that our economy is growing and that can have a big impact on people's lives. Projections are a little like looking in to a "crystal ball" but there are indicators that sometimes give us insight. It is interesting to watch the market and see what makes it tic and hum along. 

Projections can be hard. I'm curious if my belief that the economic recovery will happen in Q3 and be back to normal by Q4 at which time 2021 will see improvements above pre-covid levels. While its not directly tied to the theory I'm working on, it is the principles of the research that I'm using to predict an upswing. In part, its based on improvements in GDP through enhanced network capacities and influx of investments that lead to innovative adaptation and hopefully higher economic growth. 

Retrieved from Reuters

Because I'm curious about how it will work out I will talk about some of the economic news and how it might relate in part to the the theory (You can read more HERE). If my predictions are right that is awesome and if they are not right that is awesome! The outcome isn't really tied to the theory. The theory is about economic developing in a Digital GDP world and how that will change our economic assumptions to fit more with a network cluster development type theory; or the Theory of Transactional Clusters.

I'm just sort of playing around with different aspects of the theory to see if they can be useful for economic activities in an economy that relies increasingly on a virtual world/economy. I wrote in April the article GDP Contracts 1st Q of 2020-Is It a Short Lived Shock and Digital GDP Recovery? that relates in more detail what a digital recovery might look like.

Saphire, A. (September 11th, 2020). U.S. economy is improving, weeks before the election. Will Trump benefit? Reuters. Retrieved September 12th, 2020 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-economy/us-economy-is-improving-weeks-before-the-election-will-trump-benefit-idUSKBN2622TG

Who is Going to Win Executive Orders in the Supreme Court of Michigan?-Conflict Leads to Definition

Emergency powers has been enacted in a number of states to squelch the spread of COVID. Since that time the political and medical landscape had changed and the essential question of how long can a Governor have emergency management powers. I'm not a big conflict supporter but do sometimes see the benefit of conflict that leads to greater defining of an essential issue of who and when we can and can't use emergency powers and when do those terms end. This article isn't about picking a side or talking about who is right or who is wrong. In a pandemic it is very hard to make perfect choices with imperfect emerging information and thus conflict helps us define essential issues that could be used in the future. 

Let me say I'm taking a bird's eye view of this from an objective viewpoint and not really discussing my personal opinion on when emergency powers are expired. My interest is in the political mode of conflict and how groups disagree but that these disagreements can sometimes be more beneficial than harmful if the parties come to a resolution of important topics. (Trust me...I'm not in favor of most conflicts 😡.)

One wants a 28 day limit and the other one doesn't. Let us just use two denotations to create more objective clarity R FOR 28 day limit and G for NOT 28 days (I couldn't think of a better one😬). R and G are our two logical terms that will be used to denote the opposing sides. I suspect we could build an equation out of this if we really put some effort into it. That is not in the scope of this post either. 

R and G are upset over a contract interpretation and they have a conflict. One says Its OK and the other says its not OK. They try and settle their differences and they can't and still fell upset after talking so they want a third party to help. So we have to introduce factor C (🙈🙉🙊) They have been to court 2X  so we have C1 and C2 and they want to go again so we can introduce C3. C1 and C2 have ruled in favor of G thus far but no one knows what C3 will do. 

How will C3 decide?

Well...I have no idea! 😂 What I can say is that there is a lot of ambiguous information and there are ways in which we might break down and analyze the outcomes. There are some models out there and I will refresh my memory and share a little latter. However, I do know that this is a point in time so I want to use a trajectory so as to look at the very next likely step. 

I'm going to say again that I'm not a legal expert and am only slight familiar with how all the appeals processes work and under what circumstances. What I can say with my labor relations experience is that there are methods to dealing with this ambiguity to help decide what the likely options are. Thus, we need to look at some data so we can create some trends that help us predict the future. 

We might look at C1 and C2 and sort of predict that C3 will be the same just using probability. We might always want to review what courts have typically decisions in order to better understand how appeals courts ruled. We can thus look at prior court cases for trends in information on such things as reverse rates, total amount lost, lawsuits per year, political background, income, education, etc.. etc... etc... Whatever information is available gives us a hint. 

As a side note that is what is scary about cyber crime in that when multiple databases are hit they create lots of information and sometimes this triangulation of hits leads to new knowledge. Other times there may be enough information to create historical trends because past behavior predicts future behavior. The point being, a lot of information creates insight when it is put together well and interpreted by skillful people. 🙈

This isn't a novel idea. The intelligence community and high powered attorneys use these skills from time-to-time. For example a study of past behavior modeling of courts and the supreme court found, "Casting predictions over nearly two centuries, our model achieves 70.2% accuracy at the case outcome level and 71.9% at the justice vote level." (Katz, Bommarito & Blackman, 2017).

In this case you would have to model at the Michigan and Supreme Court level. While 70% is accurate and narrows down the ambiguity it still leaves a lot of room for error. You will want to use other decision matrix to help determine other potential choices. Because we are dealing with real actors and living people with animal spirits we must assume some rationality in decision making. Courts are typically places of higher levels of rational thought (Depends on who you ask and assuming the courts are using both critical thinking and morality in the process 😕.)

To balance this out I could use other tools to help me make decisions and Game Theory and probably another one. I like Game Theory because it interactive with moving players in a fluid situation. that doesn't mean it doesn't have its downfalls. Its just that it allows for presence of the utility of agents that can change and adjust at each of the stages to create possibilities and potentials that can be quantified. So that 30% looks something like perhaps 15%. 

A gap of 15-30% is a still a big open unknown space for people and that can be risk. Because we are dealing with novel situations that will require additional cognitive effort by the judges to fall back and rely more heavily on their strengths and personalities. This is where one would get into deep psychology and how personality impacts choices. It could go into such detail that people might be able to use neuroscience to understand human choice at a granular level.

Its not that simple though as these random "acts of God" that happen that mess it all up. We have no idea where they come from but even the best plans are subject to derailment. New information, environmental changes, political shifts, etc... all impact the context of choices. In all prediction games there is an element of randomness where even if you think your really really sure it will turn out, it doesn't, and you missed something in your calculation such an unknown or random event. Thus you must control for the unknown and randomness in some way (Way beyond the scope of this article). 

So R, G, C1, C2 C3? are all part of the same problem. If we analyzed the situation well we might have narrowed it down to being 87% sure of who will win. There is still enough large variability that one cannot discount the opposite occurring. In business we would try and hedge some risk but ultimately people will put their resources where they are likely to have a win. In business we might analyze cases to understand what new industry and legal landscape changes are occurring. 

If you want to know more about predictive analytics and some of the different models you can look at a pretty good piece entitled What is predictive analytics? Transforming data into future insights that states, " Predictive analytics is a category of data analytics aimed at making predictions about future outcomes based on historical data and analytics techniques such as statistical modeling and machine learning"(Edwards, 2019, para 1).  

While we narrowed down the most likely choices we must still use common sense. We can make predictive modeling of the possibility of reversal, adjustment and confirmation of previous legal decisions. We may find the case won't be heard and we have a vaccine as an act of a changed playing field and thus decisions that might have ended one way ended up another way; while the fundamentals of the case didn't actually change but their context did. So at the upper levels Supreme Court Justices must make decisions that impact a whole different set of expectations. If we knew what those are we can create better decision matrix by reintegrating that knowledge into our existing method. More information continues to adjust and make increasingly accurate the predictions. 

I have a good idea of which side I think will win but that is just my personal opinion. Remember that this case defines certain powers between the executive and legislative branch during an emergency so it is best we just define it and keep moving forward. 

Edwards, J. (August 16, 2019). What is predictive analytics? Transforming data into future insights. CIO. Retrieved 09-11-2020 https://www.cio.com/article/3273114/what-is-predictive-analytics-transforming-data-into-future-insights.html

Katz DM, Bommarito MJ II, Blackman J (2017) A general approach for predicting the behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States. PLoS ONE 12(4): e0174698. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0174698

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/21/whitmers-emergency-actions-upheld-court-appeals/3402687001/