nickshanagher

 Nate Silver, whose new book The Signal and the Noise aims to help people make better predictions, is celebrated in America for his ability to predict the outcome of the presidential election. However, a former professional poker player, Silver explains that his advantage comes because his competitors are television pundits and they are widely inaccurate in their views. The views of TV pundits are shaped by their own biases and they get lost in the narrative. By which he means the pundits believe in the candidates whose stories they most like. The FT last week started a series on Big Data, where companies are looking for advantage through better customer understanding, searching the internet for hidden patterns and trends to give them an edge. How much data is out there? 2.6 zettabytes are generated every year. How big is a zettabyte? It is 1 billion terrabytes. How big is a terabyte? It is 650,000 high quality photos. Should an independent shopkeeper worry about this?

This short BBC news item to take note of the move to standardised packaging in Australia is important. I was especially struck by the views of the British people about what plain packaging does and the arguments of Simon Clark. UK tobacco retailers should watch this and think about what is being said and look at the tobacco displays. I will share this link with my MP and ask him to contact the health minister and say we don't want such an experiment here. Of course I am biased but as Nate Silver demonstrates in The Signal and the Noise, everyone is. The arguments on this short item, saved for us on You Tube by Simon as the BBC does not upload Breakfast on to its iplayer, are persuasive.