Predictions of Real-World Events, Magic or Science?
November 10, 2013
The article on SmartData Collective titled Can You Predict Crowd Behavior? Big Data Can argues that prediction of real-world events like protesting and violent conflict are already being successfully predicted, not by historians or economists but by data scientists, specifically those at Recorded Future. We have all heard about Nate Silver’s voting predictions, but according to the article, Recorded Future has taken crowd behavior predicting even further,
“Back in January 2010 a small startup company called Recorded Future released a blog post claiming that Yemen would likely have food shortages and flooding that year. Due to the combination, the country was headed for conflict. By September of that year not only had Yemen experienced flooding but was also combating food shortages… By February 2012, the protests had turned violent with protesters killed by gunmen and the Yemen President suffering severe injuries after a bomb was planted in his compound.”
While we are not sure how this is working out in the real world, with actual events, businesses have certainly embraced the idea that they can sell things to people before the people even know they need them. The problem might be how to avoid creeping the customer out like the expectant mother debacle at Target. Meanwhile the issue of privacy rears its head; apparently it is never too early to start predicting bad behavior.
Chelsea Kerwin, November 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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