Google Search has sent 1,271 people to Midas Oracle yesterday alone. –- (2,577 pageviews, yesterday, fyi)
An excerpt of the historical chart regarding the Google Search traffic sent to Midas Oracle (I enlarged the time period so you can see the 2008 US Election Day spike):
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“-A loose monetary policy that created lots of cheap money, government interventions into the housing market, and the hubris of Wall Street firms deemed ‘-too big to fail’- combined to send the world economy into a tailspin, argues Swedish author Johan Norberg.”-
“-Financial Fiasco: How America’-s Infatuation with Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis, an overview of what caused the current financial crisis (and what did not) and how politicians of all parties and all ideologies helped make the problem much worse.”-
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Prof Michael Giberson,
No “-careful observer knew this in advance”- (about Chicago being a lemon), for the simple reason that if they knew, they would have downgraded Chicago on the InTrade and BetFair prediction markets, and Ben Shannon would have not bet $6,000 on Chicago.
I look forward to your contrite correction on the frontpage of Knowledge Problem —-in bold, and with a link to Midas Oracle, stating that “-Midas Oracle is the only website in the world to have told you *not* to bet on Chicago a€”and to stay (far) away from any Olympics venue prediction market.”-
My thesis holds: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a close aristocratic group that does not leak out good information.
Previously: Chicago wona€™t have the Olympics in 2016.
ADDENDUM:
– BetFair’-s event derivative prices:
– InTrade’-s event derivative prices:
– HubDub’-s event derivative prices:
The blogger at Sabernomics sees “-this as a win for prediction markets, not a failure.”-
I don’-t share his views, but I wanted to link to his piece for you to make up your own mind about the issue.
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I donta€™ know that you could say Chicago was the a€?weakest linka€?, just because it got dropped first in the voting. The political process caused it to go early. However, Michael Giberson is wrong to imply that the prediction was accurate on the basis that Chicago and Rio were fairly close. Leta€™s keep in mind that the options are about as discrete as they come. Even if Chicago were to have come in a close second, it would have been a complete miss by the market.
If one needed to make a decision that depended on whether Chicago would win the bid, the prior choice would have been completely wrong, once the true outcome was revealed.
I have to agree with Chris. The market participants did not possess a sufficient level of information completeness to arrive at the correct prediction. Furthermore, the discrete nature of the outcomes made it a risky prediction. Finally, Ia€™m guessing that few, if any, of the IOC voting members were involved in the prediction markets, leading one to conclude that all (or almost all) of the market participants were a€?noisea€? traders.
Elsewhere, another commentator claimed that, because the prediction market started to show Chicagoa€™s share falling during the morning of the vote, this was evidence that prediction markets work. Hardly. It does show that prediction markets rarely provide accurate predictions sufficiently in advance of the outcome, in order for useful decisions to be made.
The prediction market industry really needs to investigate the determinants of success and which types of markets (issues) have the potential to provide consistently accurate predictions. Way too much time and effort is being spent arguing about meaningless markets, trivial questions, and false accuracy claims.
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Previously: Chicago wona€™t have the Olympics in 2016.
ADDENDUM:
– BetFair’-s event derivative prices:
– InTrade’-s event derivative prices:
– HubDub’-s event derivative prices:
I think the a€?small, secretive committeea€? explanation is weak [].
Bradbury does an excellent job sifting through the shifting coalitions revealed in the three rounds of IOC voting. Neither Madrid nor Toyko showed any significant ability to attract votes as the rounds proceeded. It was going to be Rio or Chicago all along, but Chicago was weakest in the four-way vote and lost early, leaving the games to go to Brazil.
Based on Bradburya€™s [analysis], Ia€™m convinced that the decision was pretty much a toss up between Chicago and Rio. That conclusion was also implied in the prediction market prices just before the decision. Sure, the prediction markets favored Chicago, slightly, over Rio- I dona€™t think you can call it a miss given the closeness of the decision.
Well:
Previously: Chicago wona€™t have the Olympics in 2016.
ADDENDUM:
– BetFair’-s event derivative prices:
– InTrade’-s event derivative prices:
– HubDub’-s event derivative prices:
Chris, isna€™t it odd for you to state a€?Chicago had not the slightest chance to begin with.a€? The phrase implies you believe that the probability of Chicagoa€™s selection was near zero all along, but you have been claiming that it is impossible to predict anything about the outcomes of IOC selection processes.
Also, the NYT article reports on backbiting and disarray at the USOC. While the article is published after the IOC decision, presumably any careful observer knew this in advance [*] and you are suggesting it was relevant to the outcomes of the IOC market, i.e. you are suggesting it is a reason to have believed the Chicago selection as particularly unlikely. Again, this suggestion is contrary to your earlier views suggesting IOC decisions are unpredictable because there is no good information to aggregate.
I look forward to your correction!
[*] You presume too much, doc.
If, as you said quite cockily, “-any careful observer knew this in advance“-, then the (mass or vertical) media would have reported about that, and, logically:
The proof is in the pudding, doc.
You are wrong and I am right.
