http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch Bruce Nash explores the world of data modeling and information services Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:34:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've been thinking a lot about the changing media landscape over recent weeks, and will try to put together a more comprehensive post soon. But, for this Monday morning, I wanted to a link about "The Wisdom of Crowds". The Dirty Little Secret About the "Wisdom of Crowds"- There is ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=65 There's been more news this week on RedBox and online distribution, following the Disney/Marvel acquisition announcement on Monday. Video Business summed up the latest on RedBox yesterday.  The brief version: 1. Indie rental stores are launching a campaign to persuade people to avoid RedBox because it's "putting the entire entertainment industry at ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=59 Disney's acquisition of Marvel for $4 billion took the entertainment world by storm yesterday, with speculation centered around whether Disney had paid too much, and how they will integrate Marvel's characters into the Disney brand. From a purely financial perspective, I think the deal is risky, particularly because Marvel's characters aren't ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=49 This is too good not to share. http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=48 One of the pleasures of running a data business is coming across people who use our data in interesting ways.  Over the years, I've worked with a number of educators from high school through post-grad who use our database in a variety of ways to teach statistics. Here's an article that ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=47 GM sent me a nice letter today, thanking me for buying a car from them (many years ago now). Given that the letter was obviously prompted by their bankruptcy, they could hardly avoid the topic.  But their marketing department excelled themselves in finding a description of, well, their collapse:  As you may ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=46 I got Barnes & Noble's weekly member coupon today, which turns out to be a 40% discount on Barack Obama's books. Since the URL seemed fairly straightforward, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if I added 1 or 2 to the document number.  Et voila, history is ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=44 Updated with correction - the model also predicted Indiana incorrectly. I'm going to do a more thorough analysis in the next couple of days, but I think I can say that the model worked very well yesterday. It predicted the times that Pennsylvania and Virginia would be called accurately (it ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=43 Here's my prediction for election night with audio commentary. Note that all times are Pacific Time -- add three hours to convert to Eastern! The first six and half minutes are a quick rundown of the methodology behind the prediction. Feel free to skip that if you want to get to ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=42 Download: ElectionPrediction2008.mov Here's the presentation I gave this afternoon with my prediction for how election night will play out. Briefly, the prediction is based on first projecting the vote share for McCain and Obama in each state, and then estimating how long it will be before the networks call a state by ... http://www.the-numbers.com/thecrunch/?p=41