Google Search has sent 1,271 people to Midas Oracle yesterday alone. –- (2,577 pageviews, yesterday, fyi)
An excerpt of the historical chart regarding the Google Search traffic sent to Midas Oracle (I enlarged the time period so you can see the 2008 US Election Day spike):
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The Inkling Markets website is not on the first page for the “-prediction markets”- query at Google Search.
It appears on the 3rd page —-where nobody will find them.
By the way, the NewsFutures website has re-made it to the 1st page.
I blogged about how Wikipedia killed Encarta (the encyclopedia published by MicroSoft).
Today, here’-s a report on the demise of Wikia —-a search engine partially powered by human input (a la Wikipedia), and co-founded by Jimmy Wales. The Wired article lists all the search engine startups (Snap, PowerSet, Cuil, etc.) that miserably failed to dent into Google’-s de facto monopoly.
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BetFair – Live Chat Session – Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
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2 practicing physicians laugh at using collective intelligence for nation-wide flu detection:
[…] Flu Trends tracks almost perfectly with data on influenzalike illnesses that the CDC obtains from doctors’- offices. And as an added bonus, Flu Trends detects outbreaks up to two weeks earlier, when people are still sitting at home sneezing into their keyboards. […]
But if officials monitored only Flu Trends, it would be difficult to sort the signal from the noise —in addition to losing critical details on who is sick. Things besides an actual flu outbreak can cause people to search the Internet for flu information. We would imagine that Flu Trends would spike on the release date for a flu-related movie —maybe Outbreak 2: Electric Booga-Flu. And what happens if a pandemic flu scare hits the nightly news? Flu Trends’- ability to detect when the real pandemic hits will be obliterated when people, including those without symptoms, start to search the Internet. Monitoring drugstore sales has the same issue: A jump in cold-medicine sales may mean a flu outbreak, but it could also mean that CVS is running a sale or that flu fear is causing people to stock their medicine cabinets. […]
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They end their articles saying that Google can’-t cure the flu, anyway. [???]
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The response to the objections they jot down in the 2nd paragraph above is easy:
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Google Flu Trends
Iowa Health Prediction Market
The “predict flu using search” study you didn’t hear about – by our good Doctor David Pennock
BBC
New York Times
WSJ Health blog
University College Cork (UCC) School of Medicine + Intrade
Dylan Evans’- website
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Previously: #1 + #2 + #3
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Dixit Google Web Search:
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An Irish research team hopes to make accurate forecasts of key public health indicators.
University College Cork (UCC) School of Medicine + Intrade
Dr Dylan Evans:
Prediction markets are [specialized], small-scale financial markets operated to predict future events. The idea is that the collected knowledge of many people, each with a different perspective, will be more accurate than an individual or small group or even experts.
When they have been used to predict the outcomes of political elections, prediction markets have been found to be more accurate than alternative methods of forecasting.
The obvious area to look at in the first instance is infectious disease, but we plan to extend our research into many other areas of public health. At the moment, people do not get data on infectious disease until it’-s a couple of weeks out of date and we need to get it quicker.
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Dylan Evans’- website
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My opinion:
– Joke. ]–
APPENDIX:
– Iowa Health Prediction Market
– Google Flu Trends
– See also: Google Foundation on “-Predict and Prevent”-.
– Google Trends
– David Pennock on the fact that flu-related searches on the Web are precise predictors of the upcoming influenza outbreaks.
– BBC
– New York Times
– WSJ Health blog
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He and his co-authors were the first to publish about the fact that flu-related searches on the Web are precise predictors of the upcoming influenza outbreaks.
Congrats.
Best wishes for the rest of their scientific career.
[*] “-Make him a Saint, now!”-, in Italian.