As a civil engineer I'm fascinated by predictions of who will win the FIFA World Cup finals in Russia, seeing that we use predictions on a regular basis in engineering. For the finals, there's a wide variety of forecasts. In addition to armchair fans' predictions, there are those by the seasoned football experts. Then there are the predictions based on betting tips.
In a completely different class are the quirky animal "predictions" that belong between inverted commas. The most famous was celebrated Paul the Octopus who correctly predicted the outcome of eight matches in the 2010 World Cup finals. This year, the oracle's job has gone to Achilles, a deaf white cat from St Petersburg's Hermitage museum in Russia. With 50 other cats, Achilles's day job is to keep the museum free of rodents.
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