A Crowdsourcing Project To Make Predictions More Precise

databuff writes "Predictions are critical to modern life. Police predict where and when crimes are most likely to take place, banks predict which loan applicants are most likely to default, and hotels forecast seasonal demand to set room rates. A new project called Kaggle facilitates better predictions by providing a platform for forecasting competitions. The platform allows organizations to post their data and have it scrutinized by the world's best statisticians. It will offer a robust rating system, so it's easy to identify those with a proven track record. Organizations can choose either to follow the experts, or to follow the consensus of the crowd — which, according to New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki, is likely to be more accurate than the vast majority of individual predictions. The power of a pool of predictions was demonstrated by the Netflix Prize, a $1m data-prediction competition, which was won by a team of teams that combined 700 models. Kaggle's first competition is underway, and it is accessing the 'wisdom of crowds' to predict the winner of this May's Eurovision Song Contest." Understandably, participation requires registration.

Comments

First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict a first post!!

did we forget something?

[fusiongyro]

"Past prediction is not an indicator of future performance."

While we're at it, why don't we let everyone pool together their lottery number predictions?

Crowdsourcing predictions

[pushing-robot]

Crowdsourcing Project To Make Predictions More Precise

I think they used to call them "polls".

Re:Crowdsourcing predictions

[CannonballHead]

But this is a poll in the cloud. It's much more important.

Re:Crowdsourcing predictions

[blair1q]

It puts the zeitgeist in the machine.

Re:I can see a movie out of this project

[SnarfQuest]

How about this. Get a group of "police" that predict who will commit a crime, and arrest them beforehand. We could give it a silly name, like "minority report".