Predicting the future using statistics: Scott Cunningham at TEDxDelft 

Imagine using this on "people" the way you act the way you see Basically predicting you the way you act buy things sell things etc.

So what is the observation? It is not that complicated. Example: If a new, efficient form of propulsion is invented for the automobile, increasing fuel economy to 100 mpg compared to 25 mpg, big oil will see a 75% decrease in oil consumption. Not gonna happen. The real enemy is not our inability to invent but our ability to execute and surmounting the forces that be. The technologies have absolutely existed for years. You have read this statement and do not wholly believe it. Close your eyes and observe your paradigms. You believe all sorts of nonsense that it is still in it's "primitive stages" or "it must be too dangerous or unreliable" or "to truly test an invention, it must be executed to the masses for trial. It takes years of development." Our minds suffer from that "bigger than us" bias. This is not the truth at all. Let's look at Bill Gates. If he donates a billion dollars to provide cell phones and internet to a third world country for charity, he ultimately profits because as soon as that society gets online and their economy improves they become "consumers" immediately, from the very second they go online. Product obsolescence insures that it is a profitable hardware and software investment also. The internal combustion engine (automobile) is nothing but a mass consumer of big oil and could actually be given away for free at the welfare office. But then people would really see what things really are and we wouldn't want anyone to get Ideas. But nobody is willing to believe that this sort of evil can coexist inside of something that liberated us. TedTalks.

'The wisdom of crowds' - If you study the financial markets you will quickly realize that this gets replaced by 'The madness of crowds'. Once you allow for people to act irrationally and stupidly their collective wisdom must be carefully assessed. Markets can and do get things wrong.

Read between the lines. Big Data is Big Brother 2020

Didn't say anything of importance, didn't talk about prediction, didn't show anything meaningful on slides, waste of 7 minutes. I am an operations research scientist. He really said nothing about complexity... modular technology is not new or complex goes back to the 50's. Wow this is a Ted talk. The internet is predictable it is top down ar you kidding? You cant step in the same river twice and you can't predict a open emerging network.... computers are not best at anything but computing, the computation is only as good as the person who wrote the model or analytics algorithm. This is so weak it should not be show to high school students. AJAX is a programming language Maps partially uses it is JAva script with XML, what the heck is he trying to get at he is predicting AJAX patterns what junk science this is.... so sad people may think they learned something

me, use statistics such as casting a spell to draw conclusions in real world..

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