Balkinization  

Friday, August 31, 2007

Prediction Tools that You Can Use

Ian Ayres

I created and gathered together a bunch of java applets that will let you predict all kinds of things:

Predict How Long You'll Live (Northwest Mutual)

Predict Your Child's Due Date (Ayres)

Predict Your Child's Adult Height (University of Saskatchewan)

Predict Justice Kennedy's Vote (Ayres)

Predict Your Next Move in Rock-Paper-Scissors (Chappie)

You can see the complete list of more than 20 tools here.

At a minimum, there kind of fun. As the Indigo Girl's say:
Some long ago when we were taught
That for whatever kind of puzzle you got
You just stick the right formula in
A solution for every fool.
Least Complicated, Indigo Girls

If you know of any similar applets out there that will generate predictions based on user provided information, please post a comment telling me. Or if you have a favorite regression that you'd like me to automate for you, please send it along.

The bigger point of these applets is to show that data-driven prediction is not just for the other guy. There are ways that we can all get a mitt and get into the game.

By the way, you can read the first chapter of Super Crunchers here.

And here is some coverage from Newsweek (bless their hearts).

Comments:

ah, but the indigo girls sing later on in the very same song:

oh, i'm just a mirror of a mirror of myself
all the things that i do
and the next time i fall, i'm gonna have to recall
it isn't love, it's only something new

which may or may not point to the fact that supercrunchers can only predict things that have already happened in the past. they have no deductive power which means humans are still awesome.
 

Data mining sounds as something out of a science fiction novel. In fact, it's remarkably similar to the argument of the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
Anyway. Do you know if the book will be published in spanish?
That's because I want to write a review about for a literary magazine in Argentina.
For the time being, I wrote about it in my blog.
 

hooray for the chappie!
 

Ryan Walters and I wrote a game in the run-up to the 2004 election which performed a very simple prediction of the effects of Supreme Court retirements under a second G. W. Bush term on a handful of basic liberties. It's not super-crunching, but it is a (slightly) entertaining, interactive prediction engine extrapolating from past behavior. The game is now posted here: http://www.ryanwalters.net/features/survivor/about.asp.
 

I can't get the due date calculator one to work on either my Mac or my PC, from Ayres' personal web site or from here. Help? I'm a keenly curious prof in her 6th month....
 

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.
Agen Judi Online Terpercaya
 

Post a Comment

Older Posts
Newer Posts
Home