This is Microsoft Embracing Predictive Analysis
May 19, 2014
Now here’s a valuable use of predictive analytics. Digital Trends reports, “Microsoft to Use Bing Search Data to Predict Outcomes of Reality Shows.” Microsoft announced the initiative in this Bing blog post. It is good to see such an influential company investing its resources in issues that affect the quality of life for all humanity. Writer Konrad Krawczyk tells us:
“Beginning today [April 21], Bing will attempt to forecast the results of shows like ‘The Voice,’ ‘American Idol’ and ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ by scanning search data, along with ‘social input’ from Facebook and Twitter. For instance, if you head over to Bing right now and search ‘American Idol predictions’ like we did, the top of the page will feature a set forecasts for five singers. We’ll refrain from adding in any potential Bing-generated spoilers here, but you’re free to check out what the search engine thinks for yourself.
“‘In broad strokes, we define popularity as the frequency and sentiment of searches combined with social signals and keywords. Placing these signals into our model, we can predict the outcome of an event with high confidence,’ the Bing Predictions Team says in its blog post.
“Microsoft also says that Bing’s predictions incorporate numerous emotionally-driven factors into how it generates predictions, allegedly accounting for biases like favoritism, regardless of how a person’s favorite singer/contestant performs from one week to the next.”
While this example does sum up the gist of predictive analysis, we can think of several areas to which the technology could be better applied. To be fair, the Bing Predictions Team says reality TV is not the pinnacle of its prediction projects. Will the next initiative be aimed at similarly vacuous forecasts?
Cynthia Murrell, May 19, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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