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I'll recommend Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan" to the authors of this prediction tool. Statistics cannot be used to "predict" future behavior of a complex system.


Statistics cannot be used to "predict" future behavior of a complex system

They certainly can, and commonly are! Think of weather prediction, Bayesian diagnostic systems, Google's statistical translator and spell checker, etc etc.

Taleb's point is that they fail sometimes - perhaps more often than you think - and so you should be very careful in placing bets on statistical predictions.

In this case the cost of a failed prediction is very low, and a successful prediction is worth quite a lot, so it is a net win for Google.




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