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I have tried to estimate when the Pope will be elected with a bayesian model, but it's failed predicting that the Pope will be elected at 7th ballot.

Proof: https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/1kgst9c/concla...

Maybe I can make a blog post, just for the sake of whom that are curious

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Why would a bayesian model be better than, say, astrology in pricing that?

Bayesian models are working fine when you have few datas, and I have used the last conclaves ballots number to "train" that. It was mostly a toy project to understand better how a Bayesian model is working.

You can build a model, but is there any reason to assume it can predict what you want it to predict?

A very rudimentary process for a conclave election can be modeled by a geometric distribution. So using a bayesian model to estimate that can be appropriate. Of course, if you want a better estimation you need a more complex model, but I repeat, for a toy project it would be interesting.

Anyway, at least the real election at 4th ballot was inside the confidence interval predicted by my model.

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