Prediction market visualizations, betting, and uncertainty: A study of Reddit Posts and Comments
2026-08-17 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors looked at how people understand charts and graphs on prediction market platforms, which show chances of future events but often don't make uncertainty clear. They studied posts and comments from a Reddit community that discusses these markets. They found that users figure out uncertainty by interpreting chart details, struggling with probabilities shown, using outside knowledge, doubting the market's reliability, criticizing how the visuals are made, and linking what they see to their betting choices.
Prediction MarketsUncertainty VisualizationProbabilityMarket LiquidityData InterpretationThematic AnalysisReddit CommunityVisualization Design
Authors
Subham Sah, Alireza Karduni, Douglas Markant, Wenwen Dou
Abstract
Prediction market platforms present contracts about future events through visualizations that show probabilities, prices, trends, odds, and payout information. Although these visualizations often appear precise, they do not always show uncertainty directly. As a result, users infer uncertainty from market movement, visualization cues, and contextual information. In this paper, we examine how users interpret prediction market visualizations through a qualitative analysis of posts and comments from the Reddit community r/Kalshi. From an initial corpus of approximately 12,000 posts and 96,000 comments, we identified 360 posts containing prediction market visualizations and conducted a thematic analysis of annotated posts and related discussions. Our findings show that users infer uncertainty through several forms of interpretation: they interpret chart values, struggle with probability information displayed, bring in external knowledge, question credibility and liquidity, critique visualization design, and connecting visualized information to betting decisions.