Musings of a computer scientist on predictions, odds, and markets
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- Why Mitt Romney Won’t Pick Chris Christie as His Running Mate - Yahoo! News February 2, 2012Professor John A. Tures, LaGrange College (via Yahoo! Contributor Network) reacts to my analysis of the most likely Republican vice presidential pairings, arguing (well) against Chris Christie. Nice article. […]
- Jacob Abernethy - Google+ - Following up on the previous post, I've had something on my… February 1, 2012nice summary of piracy issue by Jake Abernethy […]
- Romney-Christie, Gingrich-Rubio are most likely ticket pairings January 31, 2012I'm block quoted here […]
- Ingraham: Maybe the Tea Party isn’t as strong as the media thinks « Hot Air January 31, 2012I'm block quoted in this article […]
- Yahoo data scientist: It’s Romney-Christie or Gingrich-Rubio — Cloud Computing News January 31, 2012I'm quoted/cited in this (not particularly good) gigaom article: "According to a predictive analysis experiment by a Yahoo data scientist, U.S. voters can expect to see either a Mitt Romney-Chris Christie or a Newt Gingrich-Marco Rubio ticket to face off against Obama-Biden in this year’s presidential election. The experiment, which author David Pe […]
Explainers
The wisdom of the ProbabilitySports crowd
One of the purest and most fascinating examples of the “wisdom of crowds” in action comes courtesy of a unique online contest called ProbabilitySports run by mathematician Brian Galebach. In the contest, each participant states how likely she thinks it is that a team will win a particular sporting event. For example, one contestant may [...]
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Betcha loses a battle; Not the war?
That didn’t take long.
Betcha is (was) an honor-based peer-to-peer betting service based in Seattle. On July 9, the Washington State Gambling Commission swept into Betcha’s offices, Gestapo style, confiscating everything, right down to their Programming PHP manual. Founder Nick Jenkins is now staring straight in the face of our country’s unconscionable forfeiture laws: you know, the ones that give law enforcement the right to sell Nick’s stuff on eBay and keep the proceeds, without ever charging him with a crime.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on the raid. The vast majority of the commenters sided with Betcha, urging Washington State officials to find better uses for their time and tax money, lamenting Washington’s ever-growing “Nanny State” credentials, and decrying the seemingly corrupt and hypocritical gambling politics involved.
To Nick and other Betcha employees and investors: Thank you for taking this risk and putting your stake in the ground, even if the current outcome is not what you’d hoped for. I hope you have the wherewithal to see this through to your day in court so that, if nothing else, we can get some clarity in the law. Here’s to hoping you’ve simply lost a battle and not the war.
Readers: Go to Betcha’s site to sign up for email updates and find out how to help.