Fancy Math Maybe Not Needed?
October 2, 2010
“Search Data ‘No More Informative’ Than Standard Analysis” seems to challenge the fancy math of outfits like Recorded Future, Palantir, and IBM SPSS. How can fancy math fail to wow the researchers? The VC crowd won’t be amused. Palantir scooped up $90 million and for what?
The article asserts:
Tracking web searches worked the best in predicting how a new video game would sell, Yahoo’s Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman said.
Ah, ha. Yahoo. The purple outfit with the revolving door this week.
The Yahooligans said:
“Given the attention that search-based predictions have received recently, it may seem surprising that search data are, at least in some cases, no more informative than traditional data sources…”
One point that jumped out at me was that using third party tabulations such as a list of top tunes worked better than fancy math.
Palantir has 90 million reasons to prove Yahoo somewhat incorrect. IBM may not care. Recorded Future has the support of the Google and In-Q-Tel. Well, Yahoo may have a better way.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2010
Freebie
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