I was really tempted to go with "Superbowl.. what's that?" But even I know what that is even though I really can't figure football out even after having watched a good part of a game (just one, yes, that was enough). Anyway as for predictions, you can go with probability and be right most of the time, but you cannot be right all the time because sometimes the long shot does come in. One of the things that Nassim Nicholas Taleb stresses in his books is that he does not make predictions and doesn't trust anyone who does. In his Antifragile one he describes getting very upset about people listening to predictions from so-called experts. He wants to shout at them to check if all the predictions they have made in the past came to be.
Something else for my reading list! I was less impressed with Silvers' Obama prediction than some people, figuring that the president would get re-elected based on a lot of factors. His state-by-state analysis was insightful, but maybe I'm not that easy to impress?! Either way, I find analytics fascinating, useful, and very informative. But I still don't think you can take the human factor out of a game. When you have people playing a competitive sport, when one team is hungrier than another there is no way analytics can crunch that into the equation. And that's why I enjoy watching some sports (football not so much though!).
This clearly shows that technology can also go wrong sometimes. Analytics is very tricky thing, we have so much of data being generated, its hard to process all of it without introducing any errors. That is the reason I chose the option "Quite a bit, because it shows the technology's fallible"
One of the things that Nassim Nicholas Taleb stresses in his books is that he does not make predictions and doesn't trust anyone who does.
@Ariella, very good point. We should neither predict nor believe in predictions. Sometimes some predictions might come true because the probability of winning or loosing is 50-50% but its always very hard to predict each and every event correctly.
True. You certainly have a 50-50 chance of correctly predicting the Superbowl winner now! I used to do it based on team colors, depending on which colors I preferred. More often than not, the team with the prettier uniform won! (Hey, it's just as good a metric as any other for those of us who aren't particularly fond of football--unless it's the Buffalo Bills.)
I voted; "Quite a bit, because it shows the technology's fallible"
- I'd say my answer is two-part; one that it shows the technology's fallible. But not all of the analytics software; just the software that Nate Silver utilized.
"We should neither predict nor believe in predictions."
How can you say we should neither predict nor believe in predictions? Prediction itself is as old as the human race. On an individual level, everyoneone at some point in time wantred to know the future. It's just a part of human nature. We've seen astrology becoming in creasingly popular as more and more people become super curious to know the future.
From a business perspective, we are hearing a lot about forcast. I don't think there is a single business that does not do with forcasts. Over the years, forcasting has been predominatly a guessing game. However, with the advent of analytics, we are now seeing attempts to minimize the guessing aspect of forcasting. With analytics, we can now apply scientific principles to determine with some degree of certaintythe future outcomes of business decisions.
"He wants to shout at them to check if all the predictions they have made in the past came to be. "
So is it only on this basis that Mr. Taleb will believe in predictions? Well that scenario is the lofty ambition of analytics. That's were we are heading wioth this exciting but intriguing world of Analytics. Are we ever going to reach that lofty goal of been able to see all our predictions come true? I am afraid notbecause Analytics does not purport to be an exact science. However, it does gives us plenty of resources to make predictions look like a scientific process. It can only gets better with time.
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