大数据的预测盲区

    你有没有把统计模型运用到约会上？

    几年前，为了给《纽约时报杂志》（New York Times Magazine）写一篇文章，对相亲网站OkCupid做了一个小分析。我们想知道在一个星期的七天里，哪天晚上最适合约会或者说“约炮”。OkCubid收集了一些出去约会的人以及他们使用移动应用情况的状态报告。我们研究了那些想发展长期关系的人和那些仅仅想“一夜风流”的人的比率。结果我们明显地发现，星期三晚上想搞一夜情的人的比率最高。

    2016年谁有可能从大选中胜出？

    在这个问题上，我可能让人失望了：我同意传统的看法。如果希拉里参选了，她很难不获得民主党的提名。共和党则很难避免一场混战，他们有一些出色的候选人，也有一些糟糕的候选人，不过现在还没人能垄断共和党，所以要打一场选战才能决出胜负。最后的大选当然取决于初选的结果，不过大家应该注意，如果希拉里•克林顿赢了初选，她将是一个很好的候选人，而且她的支持率也比较高。不过对于任何一个政党来说，连续三次赢得总统宝座都是很难的。如果到2016年美国经济很差，或者奥巴马的支持率只有38%左右，那么对于民主党候选人来说，处境将会很艰难，哪怕对于希拉里也是一样。不过现在就预言2016年有点早，确切地说是太早了。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Have you ever applied your model to dating?

    I did one little analysis with OkCupid for a New York Times Magazine piece a couple of years ago where we were trying to figure out the best night of the week to go out and get laid basically. So OkCupid collected the data of some status reports of people who were out and about using their mobile application. And we looked at the ratio of people who wanted a long-term relationship vs. people who wanted just something for [that night]. On Wednesday apparently you get the highest ratio of people who are just looking for something quick and dirty.

    2016 presidential election: Who should we be looking out for?

    So I guess I'm disappointingly in line with the conventional wisdom here. If Hillary [Clinton] runs, it's hard to see her not winning the Democratic nomination. On the GOP side I don't think there's any way to avoid having a big messy primary, they have some good candidates and some bad candidates. But no one has a monopoly on that party right now, so they're going to have to fight it out. And then the general election of course depends on who wins the primaries, but people should be a little wary because look, Hillary Clinton might be a very good candidate if she wins [the primary], and she'd be a slight favorite, but still it's hard for any party to win the White House three terms in a row. If you have a poor economy by 2016, or if Obama's approval ratings are 38% or something like that, then it's hard for a Democratic processor to prevail even if it is Hillary. Trying to make predictions at this point is a little early. Actually, it's a lot early.