Predicting Events with Public Data
With tools like wikipedia becoming increasingly important to public perception, watching what edits are being made, and who’s making them, can tell you a lot about the future.
On Friday, John McCain announced his vice presidential selection, Sarah Palin. But for some savvy data hawks, that was old news. A datamining and consulting firm, Cyveilliance, decided to monitor the Wikipedia pages of the vice presidential hopefuls, and by correlating the edits on Palin’s page with those on McCain’s, they were able to predict the selection the night before it was announced.
Note: I already shared an article. I know. I just thought this was too cool not to share, in addition. If you were writing a post on it already, let me know and I’ll delete this one.
Source: The Washington Post, Published: Friday, August 29, 2008; 5:47 PM
Nat (Nathaniel) Wharton Said,
August 30, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
Very cool, indeed. Intrade.com, a predictions futures market didn’t pick her until the last day, as well:
http://data.intrade.com/graphing/jsp/closingPricesForm.jsp?tradeURL=https://www.intrade.com&contractId=607621
Article on Intrade, Palin, and the wisdom of crowds (in this case, probably more the knowledge of insiders):
http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/08/29/chart-of-the-day-palin-on-intrade?tid=true