Predicting future events is hard, but it's among the most important tasks a journalist can perform. Especially if you work at a section called Future Perfect. Our mission is to explain the world around us to our readers, and it's impossible to do that without anticipating what comes next. Will inflation continue to rise in the US and Europe, or level off? Will the Supreme Court allow states to ban abortion, eliminating legal access in red states? Will Brazil's 212 million people be led by a left-wing populist, or a far-right anti-vaxxer? All of these questions matter, and preparing ourselves for potential outcomes -- and having a good sense of how likely specific outcomes are -- is a major part of explaining the world accurately. And if policymakers could rely on accurate predictions about the outcome of a foreign war or the advisability of a budget proposal, they could make much better policy decisions. Being good at predictions is a skill like any other -- you have to practice it.

Marine Le Pen is on course to be the next president of France, according to one fund manager's big-data analysis. Arun Kant, chief executive and chief investment officer at Singapore-based investing firm Leonie Hill Capital, told CNBC he expected the right-wing populist to prevail thanks to his firm's proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) system's analysis of troves of data. His analysis -- which he said incorporates inputs such as social and traditional media discussions, polling, economics and demographics -- predicts that Le Pen will "walk over" her opponents in the first electoral test and then prove most forecasters wrong and steal the lead in the second ballot, Kant said. The French vote is split into two phases, with the top two candidates from the April 23 round due to face each other in a second run-off on May 7. In the running alongside 48-year old Le Pen are former economy minister and independent candidate Emmanuel Macron, conservative ex-prime minister Francois Fillon and socialist Benoit Hamon. Kant's AI program predicts that Le Pen would take 28 percent of the vote in the first round, he said, which would best 16.4 percent for Fillon, and 19 to 20 percent for Macron.