The 2002 Trading Agent Competition (TAC) presents a challenging market game in the domain of travel shopping. One of the pivotal issues in this domain is uncertainty about hotel prices, which have a significant influence on the relative cost of alternative trip schedules. We survey agent approaches, finding an interesting diversity of techniques, taking into account differing sources of evidence bearing on prices. Based on agents' actual predictions in the TAC-02 finals and semifinals, we analyze the relative efficacy of these approaches. Employing a new measure of prediction quality, we relate absolute accuracy to bottom-line performance in the game.
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