World Cup 2010 prediction — here comes the science

(drumroll …)

And sophisticated analysis of Netherlands’ and Spain’s tactics predict a Spanish win this Sunday at Soccer City Stadium.

From the link:

Mathematicians and football supporters Dr Javier López Peña and Dr Hugo Touchette from Queen Mary, University of London have collected ball passing data from all of the FIFA World Cup games and analysed it to reveal the nations’ different styles of play.

Using the mathematical technique called Graph Theory, they have revealed the gaping holes in England’s tactics against Germany game and made predictions about the Netherlands-Spain final that could rival the psychic octopus.

For each national side, Drs López Peña and Touchette have drawn up a ‘network’ of passes between players throughout the tournament and analysed how these networks compare between teams. Dr Touchette explains: “Each player in the network is given a score called centrality which measures how vital they are to the network. The higher the centrality score, the bigger the impact if that player wasn’t there. This method is most commonly used to make computer networks more robust, but it can also be used to plan football strategy.”

2010 — a look back, a look ahead

The New York Times has an AP article today that looks back at the last ten years and makes a few projections for the next ten covering nine sectors: banking, real estate, retail, health, manufacturing, automobiles, energy, airlines and media/technology.

From the link, here’s what the article predicts for energy:

THE DECADE AHEAD: By 2019, many cars may get 50 miles per gallon or better. Improved gas mileage, rising prices for gasoline and more energy-efficient homes are seen keeping demand for oil and natural gas at moderate levels in the U.S.

Even so, nearly half of the nation’s electricity still will come from coal even with more wind and solar energy sources.

Ray Kurzweil on the next ten years

Via KurzweilAI.net — Anyone who’s read this blog for any amount of time knows I regularly cover the offerings at KurzweilAI in general and Ray’s thoughts on the future in particular. He’s certainly one of the most prominent futurists out there right now.

Top futurist, Ray Kurzweil, predicts how technology will change humanity by 2020

NY Daily News, Dec. 13, 2009 Solar power on steroids, longer lives, the chance to get rid of obesity once and for all, and portable computing devices that start becoming part of your body rather than being held in your hand are among Ray Kurzweil’s forecasts for the coming decade. Read Original Article>>

PC circa 2019

At least according to MIT’s Media Lab.

From the link:

One thing everyone seems to agree on: The PC of 2019 won’t look like today’s laptops. “I’m not seeing people carrying anything that looks like a book,” says Dan Siewiorek, a professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. “It would be like a phone or a ring or watch. It will probably take multiple form factors.”

Worst financial predictions of 2008

This is one of those articles that just writes itself under these conditions. I’m betting you could take the business section of any paper in the US and find a bad prediction, or two, every single day of the year until the bottom really dropped out.

Here’s one from the outgoing president:

4. “The market is in the process of correcting itself.” —President George W. Bush, in a Mar. 14, 2008 speech

For the rest of the year, the market kept correcting…and correcting…and correcting.