Yahoo Predicts America's Political Winners
Data scientists at Yahoo are using prediction markets—along with polls, sentiment analysis on Twitter, and trends in search queries—to create the mother of all political prediction engines. The project involves Web-based prediction markets like Intrade, in which large numbers of people bet on the outcomes of elections. The researchers behind this effort, David Rothschild, an economist at Yahoo Research, and Dave Pennock, a computer scientist at Yahoo Research, call their effort the Signal. They plan to produce data visualizations that best convey probability to a lay audience, and to publish work on machine learning and fundamental economic models based on the effort.
Jan 19, 2012 12:00 AM
The effort combines a variety of data-driven approaches.