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Algorithm Names Powell 'Ideal' Vice President Candidate
CWmike writes "Turns out the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. John McCain is the same person as the ideal vice presidential candidate for Sen. Barack Obama, according to a sophisticated online survey based on technology developed at MIT. Mr. Ideal? Colin Powell, a former U.S. Army general and former secretary of state. Affinnova's survey methods doesn't use the typical polling method of asking respondents to pick a name from a list. Instead, it gives respondents larger concepts, including photos, biographical information and possible first-term priorities. Affinnova calls this algorithm 'evolutionary optimization.' Steve Lamoureaux, the company's chief innovation officer, said of the VP finding: 'We never imagined that the same candidate would show up for both parties.'"
Ooooh! Job titles like that have TRUST written all over them!
Three Squirrels
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
How many voted for JFK?
Or Elvis Aaron Presley?
Or Santa Claus?
Or Dart Vader?
Or SpongeBob?
The better question is, how many of those would do a better job...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well... JFK managed NOT to start World War III.
AND he did the sexiest movie icon ever...
And SpongeBob would probably do far better job than most.
Have you seen his work? That guy apparently can't do wrong.
Even when he fucks up it turns out great in the end.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I think you're missing the point, which is that Powell in some sense falls into both parties and this is WHAT makes him (at least according to this) such a good candidate. I've done my own data mining studies on the US Senate, and the computer was able to easily divide the Senate into two camps. Uninterestingly, it placed almost all the Democrats into one camp, and all the Republicans into the other. So even a stupid computer can tell the difference.
You're taking the one guy who bucks tradition and using it as an example for why the parties are indistinguishable. You have it completely backwards.
(And by the way, the only Senator my data mining system got "wrong" was Hillary Clinton -- she ended up placed with the Republicans.)
Divination through dancing retired politicians is no way to run a society!
Watery tarts throwing swords is clearly a superior methodology.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
is that their algorithm is severly flawed.
I don't know how it could be flawed. It was developed by Colin Powell himself, and is very simple to follow:
switch(presidentialCandidate)
{
default:
return colinPowell;
break;
}
I don't see any bugs, do you?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
There's a certain amount of unrest with people at the idea of the president becoming incapacitated.
*cough*FDR*cough*four term President*cough*
*cough*No TV*cough*or Internet*cough*
*cough*FDR*cough*four term President*cough*
*cough*First Lady Eleanor ran things for years*cough*
*cough*no TV*cough*
*cough*people started electing on looks with Kennedy*cough*
*cough*you have to be 18 to vote, but can still vote when you're senile at 96*cough*
"...Usually a Pres. and Vice-Pres. are in the same general age range..."
Not entirely true. Look at Bush/Cheney: Dick Cheney, a known Vampyre, is dated to be at least 450 years old, making him nearly 20 generations older than Bush.
If you think
Impossible, the voting was done on a Diebold 3000 voting machine and party drink mixer combo.
How dare you suggest something funny was going on.
How anyone could call the regime of Saddam peaceful is just nonsense.
Your straw man, he is on fire.
Obama and Hillary have clashed too much for her to be a good VP choice. Who can unite the Democratic party?
McCain needs someone who can help him portray fiscal responsibility. Who is the only recent President with a budget surplus?
Both parties should nominate Bill Clinton as VP. He can't run for President because of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. Wikipedia says it's unclear whether the 12th Amendment would prevent him from becoming VP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Vote for Bill!
Please do not mod this as funny!
Wheelchair-using == semicapacitated
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
I too wrote a similar program and was equally surprised to find that the ideal VP for both candidates was myself. Who would have thought...
And his country doesn't want him. Conclusive evidence age matters.
-- arstchnca
--
How about when he died in office? Was he incapacitated then?
FGD 135
The PATRIOT act is bad, but it's not responsible for the unhealthy political climate in the US, which is what I was talking about. The worst offenses of the government have not been pieces of legislation, but illegal actions by the President and the executive branch. It's pretty obvious that the Democrats do not have enough power to fix that, and won't until Obama's term starts, so claiming it's their fault for not fighting hard enough doesn't make sense.
We finance damn near everything with fake (deficeit) dollars, the War is no different than anything else. The War in Iraq (first or second) has NOTHING to do with the credit cruch, housing downturn, etc. Bush actually CUT Taxes so your ideas have no basis in fact. Young men sent to Iraq? WTF? The US Armed Forces are 100% VOLUNTEER!! These men and women chose the military knowing they could be over in Iraq any day. I will agree that buying it all from China is a bad thing. Blame Wal-Mart but they will say that is what the consumer wants so we only have ourselves to blame, NOT, repeat NOT George Bush.
Clearly you never saw a little documentary called Weekend at Burnie's.