For those of you who don't take decision-making quite as seriously as we do, you can now turn to Apple's Siri. Ask Siri to Roll the dice and she'll roll two dice for you, reporting Rolling… it's two and six. Or, if you prefer a coin toss, ask her to Flip a coin to which she might respond It's tails. Good luck. … [Read more...]

A recent paper from Korea University Business School suggests that thinking too specifically when trying to predict an outcome makes you less likely to get it right. Researchers compared predictions made about the overall outcome (win/draw/lose) of sporting events with predictions made about the actual scoreline. Scoreline predictions are also overall outcome predictions---e.g. if the score is … [Read more...]

The Global Data on Events Location and Tone (GDELT) project is attempting to document all the important political events in recorded history. It currently contains data on over 250 million events, stretching back to 1979---and the intention is to extend that all the way to 1800. Events are geotagged to city level and contain information on the type of confrontation, the parties involved and the … [Read more...]

Mike Young, of Decision Workshops, has just released a screencast explaining how to use confrontation analysis to analyze political confrontations. He uses the approach to model the current tensions in Bahrain. The screencast makes extensive use of Decision Workshops' proprietary Microsoft Excel-based modeling tool. More information on this tool can be obtained by contacting Decision Workshops … [Read more...]

Publishing your data isn't enough---consumers have to be able to find and use it. The Open Knowledge Foundation has officially recognized this through its Frictionless Data initiative. They propose: simple formats (e.g. CSV, JSON) simple tooling---i.e. the ability to get data in and out of standard software packages, such as Excel, R and Hadoop. bootstrapping the system with essential data … [Read more...]