While I’m definitely a fan of the uber-simplistic and sexy approach to blogging by tumblr, there clearly exist some basic functionalities that are missing and tumblr has been late to add. And, as I haven’t been serious enough to create a personal website including a WordPress /blog yet, I’ve just added commenting using disqus and ajaxed search …

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kind-of twitter addict latelyaccording to Robert Scoble

I’m teaching the course ‘Information Extraction Algorithms’ (well, pure data mining in practice) at the post-graduate program  ’Applied Mathematical Sciences’ of NTUA’s School of Applied Mathematics and Physics. I’m strongly considering the idea of employing a blog to serve at the core of the learning process. The class is held at a pc-lab, so it came …

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Prediction Markets most popular topic in Collective Intelligence FooCamp, held a couple of days ago at Google, with an awesome list of attendees (coverage here and here)

It is possible that the many, no one of whom taken singly is a sound man, may yet, taken all together, be better than the few, not individually but collectively, in the same way that a feast to which all contribute is better than one supplied at one man’s expense. […] There is this to …

Continue reading “It is possible that the many, no one of whom taken singly is a sound man, may yet, taken all together, be better than the few, not individually but collectively, in the same way that a feast to which all contribute is better than one supplied at one man’s expense. […]
There is this to be said for the many. Each of them by himself may not be of good quality; but when they all come together it is possible that they may surpass—collectively and as a body, although not individually—the quality of the few best. […]
Provided the mass of the people is not too slave-like, each individual will indeed be a worse judge than the experts, but collectively they will be better, or at any rate no worse.”

Rounded corners are often a designers’ holy grail. They seem to provide a concrete user experience and a feeling of smoothness in navigation, while they are being selected recently for more and more web 2.0 designs. Well, I’m not a designer, but need forced me to explore and implement some rounded magic. There exists a lot of available techniques, …

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Prediction markets failed to accurately predict the unexpected effect a few tears had on the New Hampshire primaries; and some analysts rushed to blame the tool and undermine its reliability and applicability. Let me restate some fundamentals and my view, in a snapshot: Markets are not prophets, prophets do not exist. A mechanism’s forecastability should not be judged against a virtual fool-proof …

Continue reading “GIGO and prophets, tears and markets”

After the launch of Wall Street Journal’s Political Market (powered by intrade, coverage here and here) and CNN’s Political Market (powered by inkling), McCluskey and Hanson also debuted Presidential Decision Markets. Today, Cowgill, Wolfers and Zitzewitz just released a full-fledged draft studying markets at Google, which is absolutely exceptional, definitely the most massive enterprise prediction markets application and study ever conducted! (coverage by the NY Times here.) I may return to comment further on …

Continue reading “A really hot year for prediction markets has just started”