Archive for the tag 'charts'
FINALLY, THE PREDICTION MARKETS ARRIVE IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Chris F. Masse May 21st, 2008
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The image above is static —it’s a screen shot of the chart widget, not the chart widget itself. (I haven’t had access to their code, see, so I am not able to embed it here for you.) To view their updated widget, right-click on the image above, and open the link into a new browser tab.
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- First time I see a big UK newspaper associates “BetFair” with the term “prediction markets”.
- Their explainer is quite acceptable.
- That is a great step for BetFair. Congrats.
- I’d explain things differently —and I dislike that they suggest that the prediction markets can greatly outperform the polls, described as not “accurate enough”. Pollsters do the best they can, it seems to me.
- The output that BetFair hands out and the journalists seek are probabilities (expressed in percentages) —not those damn decimal/digital odds.
- The chart widget they use is crappy. I already discussed it. It has usability problems with FireFox. It does not go into feeds. And it’s not readable enough. Look at the alternative, just below. (The only reason those idiots of journalists are using that crappy widget is that BetFair customized it for them, by putting their fucking newspaper trademark on top of the widget.)
- Anyway, the dead-tree, print newspapers are dying, and the future belongs to blog networks.
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The chart below is better… more readable… and it goes into feeds… - But those idiots at the Telegraph won’t show it to you because it is not pinned with the “Telegraph” trademark.
Please, BetFair, do give us the possibility to have a wider time period for the chart data.
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Sphere: Related ContentPrediction Markets & Data Visualization
Chris F. Masse May 15th, 2008
Spot that that guy didn’t say, “I monitor a prediction market“. He said, “I monitor a chart“.
InTrade, TradeSports, BetFair, TradeFair, NewsFutures and HubDub have a huge work to do to improve their charts. In the future, they will output richer charts. Customizable, dynamic, compound charts, with news markers.
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Sphere: Related ContentHuge quality improvement (well, considering that they started from 1,000 meters below the sea level) in the BetFair blog, lead by their resident prediction market guy, Mike Robb
Chris F. Masse April 23rd, 2008
- The guy has shown commitment. Look at the semi-long list of posts he has produced.
- The guy has finally understood that people want red meat —dynamic charts (i.e., self-updating) that link to the said prediction markets.
- I observe, in passing, that their Pennsylvania compound chart is still alive (which is good), but, alas, the individual Clinton and Obama charts have died less than 24 hours after the primary elections. (I have strongly regretted this situation, to say the least, as you remember. If you want to compare BetFair with the other prediction exchanges on that technical matter, click here to see all the expired Pennsylvania charts.)
- They have output an embeddable compound chart with news markers, as I blogged about, some time ago. It’s a great idea. Except that their political comments are childish, and that BetFair should let any external blogger add their own news markers.
- The contrast is now great between Mike Robb’s blog posts (which now have a vital data visualization component) and the other contributors’ writings (which are just raw texts sent over e-mail for publication on the BetFair blog). Look at this dull Monte-Carlo story and this pale Champions League article. I suppose that these contributors are external, freelance journalists, who moonlight for BetFair. By contrast, Mike Robb (whose real HammerSmith name is “Michael Robb“) is a resident BetFair employee, who has access to, what I would call, the betting exchange culture (which includes spying on Midas Oracle for ideas). So, the fix to apply to the BetFair blog is simple: Fire all the external writers and get more of in-house BetFair writers like Michael Robb. Then, unleash the innovation gate (again, by spying on Midas Oracle for ideas).
- So, the story of the BetFair blog (created in August 2007) is a story of arrogant incompetence. Today, (that is, 9 months later), for the first time, a semblant of sanity is piercing thru the crass.
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Sphere: Related ContentThe definitive proof that it’s presently impossible to practice prediction market journalism with BetFair.
Chris F. Masse April 19th, 2008
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Unlike InTrade and NewsFutures, BetFair does not deliver any chart after that the prediction market has expired —leaving the blog post that linked to it totally blank (in a digital world where old content is King, and where Google sends traffic to old blog posts).
The BetFair marketing department is staffed by arrogant incompetents who are incapable of establishing a working relationship with prediction market bloggers like me.
There is nothing more important for our industry than the uprising of new blogs that would hot-link to the charts of prediction markets. The BetFair marketing team hasn’t computed that yet, in spite of all efforts made in their direction.
Of all the prediction market firms I talk with, BetFair is the most impermeable to the prediction market approach: their degree of arrogance is inversely proportional to their level of competency.
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Newspapers publish static charts, which quickly become obsolete —in a Google world where old content is King.
Chris F. Masse April 12th, 2008
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News papers deserve to die.
Newspapers = dinosaurs.
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Sphere: Related ContentBetFair and InTrade (the so-called leaders in the field of prediction markets) haven’t had the first clue about prediction market journalism.
Chris F. Masse April 2nd, 2008
SCOOP: We have identified the bozo who edits BOTH the BetFair blog AND the InTrade bulletin. IT’S A FUCKING MONKEY.
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WEB EXCLUSIVE — PLEASE, DO CREDIT MIDAS ORACLE FOR THE SCOOP.
THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOL‘S DAY JOKE. THIS IS REAL. (Click here to re-read our 2008 April Fool’s Day joke, making fun of Bo Cowgill and BetFair.)
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After months of deep investigations (the Washington Post editors can return to the locker room), we have managed to uncover the truth. Here are our revelations (the News Of The World editors can return to the locker room):
- The BetFair blog and the InTrade bulletin are edited by the same person.
- That person is in fact an animal.
- The animal has been identified as a monkey.
- It’s a male. (Previous speculations that he/she would be hermaphrodite are infirmed by our team of investigators.)
- That monkey’s name is “Max”. (Nothing to do with ex-HSX Max Keiser.)
- Max hasn’t the first clue about prediction market journalism.
- Max hasn’t the first clue about web publishing.
- Max is a moronic bozo.
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Here’s Max, the editor of both he BetFair blog and the InTrade bulletin:
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That moronic bozo is not even able to publish dynamic charts (i.e., prediction market charts that are hot-linked to the exchanges’ web servers so that they are updated automatically on the webpage where they are re-published, and that at least once a day, when that webpage is refreshed by the reader, SO THAT READER COMING FROM GOOGLE SEARCH, WEEKS OR MONTHS AFTER THE PUBLISHING DATE, CAN STILL GET FRESH INFORMATION):
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The BetFair blog is currently publishing on its prediction market frontpage… old static charts… dating from February 2008:
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(You’ll see plenty of other out-dated static charts on their prediction market frontpage.)
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For you to compare, I have pasted below the dynamic chart (and I have embedded a BetFair link into that chart):
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TECHNICAL NOTE: Writing that present blog post, I am realizing that the BetFair techies have just changed the URLs of their dynamic charts. (I implemented the new URL for the chart above, of course —and I have updated my “Predictions” page.) Which means that all my old dynamic BetFair charts that I have published so far on MIdas Oracle do not appear anymore, when readers coming from Google Search find out our old posts. I AM SO FURIOUS AT THOSE INCONSEQUENT, BRAIN-DEAD MONKEYS IN HAMMERSMITH, YOU HAVE NO IDEA. Nobody from BetFair e-mailed me about that, by the way.
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As for the InTrade bulletin, a short look at their recent archives (March 5, 2008) shows that it is also stuffed with out-dated static charts:
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For your to compare, I have pasted below the dynamic chart (and I have embedded an InTrade link into that chart):
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TAKEAWAY:
- BetFair and InTrade are staffed by incompetent imbéciles.
- Senior executives and managers at BetFair and InTrade haven’t the first clue about prediction market journalism and the need to popularize dynamic charts of prediction markets.
- I think my rant on this present blog post is useless. Monkeys can count (follow the link embedded in the picture below) but they can’t read. I am going to contact their Big Kahuna directly and present my viewpoint.
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Sphere: Related ContentWhat should Nigel Eccles do with HubDub’s cash
Chris F. Masse March 13th, 2008
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Play-money prediction exchange HubDub has been selected to be part of a group of British startups that will be touring the Silicon Valley.
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HubDub should redo completely its charting system. They are using Adobe Flash technology, and I’m not sure it’s the right one.
- One should be able to download the HubDub static charts (including the expired charts) and re-publish them on blogs;
- One should be able to publish HubDub dynamic charts (i.e., charts that update themselves in the future);
- One should be able to see the HubDub dynamic charts within one’s feed reader; [*]
- The HubDub blog, which has started a grand foray into prediction market journalism (see this entry on Spitzer), should publish dynamic trading charts.
Other than that, I like HubDub very much, and I think that the arrival of Nigel Eccles on the scene is the best thing that happened in the field of prediction markets last year (in 2007).
[*] The NewsFutures and Bet2Give presidential widgets, and the Inkling Markets widgets, suffer from that problem, too. (As I understood it, JavaScript doesn’t work in feed readers.)
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Midas Oracle is incontestably [*] the best vertical portal to prediction markets.
Chris F. Masse February 21st, 2008
This site has more than you need to know about futures markets and the subtle point that they don’t predict but rather capture what people think will happen. Clear?
My dual strategy is paying off.
- Presenting a prediction market chart associated with an explainer about prediction markets on the blog frontpage —on top of the daily posts, making the reading of this introductory material compulsory for our visitors.
- Publishing, again, the explainer on prediction markets on top of the page grouping the current prediction market charts. This “predictions” page has been the more popular material on Midas Oracle, these last 30 days.
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[*] Overcoming Bias and Freakonomics are not prediction market blogs. And they didn’t take my challenge to comment on the BetFair Starting Prices.
Sphere: Related ContentBetFair inaugurates a Politics zone (with compound charts) that nobody (but their so-called usability experts) will be able to see.
Chris F. Masse February 5th, 2008
The link to that Politics zone is well hidden deep into the BetFair system. Here’s the screen shot of a BetFair prediction market page.
- The trader should first click on the “Rules” tab on a political market page (since the rules of an election market are obvious, it’s unlikely);
- The trader who will not get that clicking on the blue image (wrongly titled, “Politics - Bet now”) will bring them to that Politics zone;
- The link to the Politics zone, and the link to the BetFair blog, have nothing to do under the “Rules” label. Both links should be regrouped under an “Information” tab.
OK, let’s go now to that Politics zone.
- The main political probabilistic predictions are regrouped on one page. Great.
- There are compound charts, which we can republish on our prediction market blogs. Great.
- On my screen, the probabilities are given in percentages. Great. (My browser is based on the US system. I wonder whether a British browser connecting from within the UK shows the “Odds” option, instead.)
Here’s a zoom on a chart:
- “Next US President”, would be better.
- Great colors.
- Maybe a pale blue or green (as opposed to white), for the background, would have been cuter.
- No historical charts. Spot that this chart starts on January 20, 2008, well after that that prediction market was created. No good.
- No volumes. No good.
- No way to get expired charts. No good.
- No explainer on how to get dynamic charts. No good. (See appendix.)
The InTrade-TradeSports charts are much, much better. Go there, select a prediction market, click on “Advanced Charting”, and then play with the charts. You will see what I mean.
On that one, the Britons are way behind. I suspect that the BetFair usability employees don’t exchange views with the most advanced BetFair traders/bloggers. They view Hammersmith as a Kibbutz, maybe. Or maybe they indulge too much on James Bond movies and they think they all belong to the MI6. A usability expert who doesn’t survey advanced users is like a butcher without meat. Internet usability is more an approach than an expertise. It all starts with user surveys and eye-tracking research. I doubt they have great usability professionals who know how to reach out.
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In the appendix of this post, I am pasting a hot-link to the chart above, just to see if the BetFair server accepts that. (I bet not. A pity. Dynamic charts would be great for bloggers.) Let’s see, just below. (If you see nothing just below, it means there’s no way to have constantly updated charts from BetFair.)
UPDATE: I saw the hot-linked chart… Great. I hope the image will not disappear once I have updated this post… (It happened to me when I tried to hot-link to the InTrade charts…)
UPDATE #2: Great. I have hot-linked to 3 of their compound charts on our “Predictions” page. I have, of course, provided deep links to the appropriate BetFair pages.
Sphere: Related Content
