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Finding the predictive geniuses
James Acevedo is a "genius," though he admits no one at the elementary school in Ridgewood, N.J., where he teaches third grade, knows it.
But the Web site where he competes nightly, PicksPal.com, was so taken by his record at forecasting sporting events that it included him last month in a newly compiled list of 30 super-achievers culled from about 100,000 members and began selling their "genius picks" to the public.
The obvious critical rejoinder is that someone from the group has the lucky touch, but only for a while.
"I go with my gut," he said. "It doesn't feel like I'm a genius."
James is reluctant to take his wisdom to Las Vegas. Here is the story, and thanks to Robin Hanson for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on October 19, 2006 at 07:15 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Of 100,000 pickers, random chance would predict that the top 30 do pretty darn well.
Posted by: josh at Oct 19, 2006 8:44:27 AM
Yea no kidding. Who knows how many other websites he tried on and failed and managed to get lucky on this one.
Posted by: paul at Oct 19, 2006 12:22:21 PM
In a 1984 speech, (Warren) Buffet asked his listeners to imagine that all 215 million Americans pair off and bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss. The one who calls the toss incorrectly is eliminated and pays his dollar to the one who was correct.
The next day, the winners pair off and play the same game with each other, each now betting $2. Losers are eliminated and that days winners end up with $4. The game continues with a new toss at doubled stakes each day. After 20 tosses, 215 people will be left in the game. Each will have over a million dollars.
According to Buffet, some of these people will write books on their methods: "How I Turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days Working 30 Seconds a Morning". Some will badger ivery-tower economists who say it can't be done: "if it can't be done, why are there 215 of us?" "Then some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 215 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the result would be the same -- 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips."
From "Fortunes Formula" p314
;)
Posted by: SheetWise at Oct 19, 2006 1:12:57 PM
http://www.marketocracy.com/
has done ok
Posted by: bhauth at Oct 20, 2006 12:53:18 AM
Has any journalist ever in the history of time taken a statistics class?
Posted by: BillWallace at Oct 20, 2006 4:02:27 AM
So there are all these people out there who are genuises at doing things like picking stocks and winning teams, and they're not interested in money and will give away their potentially extremely lucrative information for free on websites? This sounds like a fantasy to me.
Posted by: Timothy Can at Oct 24, 2006 3:03:58 AM
I apologize if I learned the following story here....Here's how gambling scamsters trick their marks into believing they can pick winners. They send an email to a huge number of people promising that they can can pick all the winners, and they give away their winning picks free for a while, and then start charging later:
Example:
Send 100,000 people an email about game 1. 50,000 are told A will win, and 50,000 are told B will win. When B wins, they send another email to the 50,000 who were told B would win....25,000 are told C will win game 2 and 25,000 are told D will win game 2.
When D wins game 2, they send emails to the 25,000 people who were told D would win game 2. 12,500 are told E will win game 3, and 12,500 are told F will win game 3. When F wins, they send an email to the 12,500 people who think the scamsters have picked 3 straight, telling them that those first 3 picks were free, but now the next pick will cost them x dollars.....
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