Hello again, everyone! Finding myself with some down time this evening, I took the opportunity to analyze my predictions for the April 2021 General Conference and to score the results. I wound up scoring those with a slightly-larger margin of error than usual. That is because I couldn't have anticipated that the Church would have general authorities outside the United States prerecord remarks that were given during that General Conference, nor could I have anticipated that the entire Sunday Morning Session would consist of international speakers and President Neelson.
Smiliarly, I could not have anticipated that the newly-called aarea seventies would be presented in advance of the General Conference weekend. I also had no way to know that the Church would sustain the new members of the Presidency of the Seventy in advance, or that the only area seventies released would be those called as General Authority Seventies. And I definitely couldn't firmly gauge the full impact of COVID-19 on the Churchwide growth (or lack thereof) for the last year.
With all of that in mind, I want to share a look at the scoring information for wthose predictions. As z refresher course, especially for those following along with these results for the first time, for every predictable element, I utilize a 3-point scale. For the section wherein speakers and those conducting each session are listed, if I had the right person in the right slot in the right session, that was 3 points. Some examples of that would be my correct prediction that President Oaks would conduct the first session, and that the first two speakers would be President Nelson and Elder Uchtdorf. So that would be 3 points for each of those correct predictions.
A 2-point score was assigned where I had the correct individual(s) in the correct session(s), but not in the right order. Examples of that are the other two apostles who spoke in the Saturday Morning Session. Although I successfully predicted all 3 apostles, I had Elders Stevenson and Gong in the wrong order in that session. Meanwhile, 1 point was given for getting a speaker correct at any point in the General Conference, even though those individuals were not placed in the correct session and order in which they wound up speaking.
An example of that would be that I predicted the entire First Presidency would speak at the end of the Sunday Morning Session, but Presidents Oaks and Eyring spoke in their custmoary slots. So I was correct about them speaking, but not about when that would happen. Meanwhile, for anything that occurred which was not predicted, in most cases, that resulted in a score of 0. I mentioned "in most cases" because I did allow a slight margin of error on the predictions, given everything I could not have possibly predicted.
That said, on to the changes in Church leadership. Although the changes in the Presidency of the Seventy were not predicted, I gave myself 1 point for correctly predicting that Elder Palmer would be one of the two new members called whenever the change occurred. I also correctly predicted new general authorities, changes in area seventies, and a new Primary General Presidency, and the Church leadership changes were also scored on a curve.
For the statistical report, each element was worth 3 points. If I was within a fair margin of error (such as for the total number of missions and congregations), I scored those two elements as fully accurate. The children of record, convert baptisms, full-time and Church service missionaries were scored on a slight curve since those numbers were unpredictable. And I was fully correct on the total number of temples dedicated, rededicated, and in operation.
And finally, for the temple predictions, if I correctly predicted the exact location for any of the new temples, a score of 3 points were given for each of those. For the rest (where I had the right state or nation, but the wrong exact city), each of those were worth 2 points. As mentioned in the document showing my scoring breakdown, the overall percentage of accuracy on these predictions came out to 64.61%, putting me in the lower end of my usual range of 60-80& accuracy.
Hopefully everything I have laid out here makes sense to you all. Feel free to ask for clarification on anything that may be confusing. I would also just add that I antiicipate the annouoncement of new area leadership assignments for this ear to be made any day now. If that doesn't happen tomorrow, it will probably occur towards he mid-to-late part of next week. Hopefully I can get my list of the most likely changes that could be announced published to this blog before the announcement is offiicially made, but we'll have to see what happens there.
I also continue to monitor all Church news reports and temple updates and will be sure to bring you all word of those as I become aware thereof. That does it for now. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated, on any post at any time, as long as such comments are made in accordance with the established guidelines. Thank you for the privilege of your time. If you enjoyed what you read here and would like to stay informed of newly added content, please feel free to subscribe. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do..
