During the presidential election, Bolos and O'Connor told us about a man named Nate Silver. silver created an algorithm that predicted the outcome of the election. Just like Silver, Lada Adamic, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan and Facebook, loved algorithms as well. However, her algorithms are not used for politics, but rather used to predict how successful a recipe will turn out, according to this article from NPR. Also, like Silver, her algorithm was pretty accurate, nearly 80 percent accuracy. Adamic has not put up her predictions on website yet, due to time, but you can read about how she built her algorithm here.
With all of these algorithms, it seems that the outcome or future can be closely predicted. As such, it made me curious about whether or not I would like to know a suspected outcome of an event before it even happens. Personally, I do not think I would enjoy knowing because it would take the suspense and excitement out of it. However, knowing what will happen will definitely allow you to be mo prepared. What do you think? Would more Americans like knowing the outcome of such events through algorithms? Or do you think more people would rather not know a suspected outcome until the actual outcome happens?
I think American's value being ahead and finishing fist. However, there is a lot of fear going into events and a predicted outcome helps settle that fear. What is risk if you already know the outcome? I believe that there is great reward when a risk is taken and pays off. If you know it is going to pay off, is the excitement the same? No. I think that some American's need the safety blanket, but in order to feel the thrill, you just have to wing things.
ReplyDeleteThe thing to remember is that there's a reason scientists always hedge their bets: no algorithm, no matter how refined, can ever guarantee an outcome. 99.99% does not equal 100%. There is no predicting the future, and if the odds seem stacked to one side, so what? America loves the underdog.
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