Forecasting Newsletter. Typos

This commit is contained in:
Nuno Sempere 2020-05-23 21:45:45 +02:00
parent 0cb5331eeb
commit 62b52b9544

View File

@ -119,7 +119,7 @@ The Center for Security and Emerging Technology is looking for forecasters to pr
- [United Nations: World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2020](https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and-prospects-as-of-mid-2020/). A recent report is out, which predicts a 3.2% contraction of the global economy. Between 34 and 160 million people are expected to fall below the extreme poverty line this year.
- [Kelsey Piper of Vox disses on the IHME model](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/5/2/21241261/coronavirus-modeling-us-deaths-ihme-pandemic). "Some of the factors that make the IHME model unreliable at predicting the virus may have gotten people to pay attention to it;" or "Other researchers found the true deaths were outside of the 95 percent confidence interval given by the model 70 percent of the time."
- [Fox News](https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/cdc-says-all-models-forecast-increase-in-covid-19-deaths-in-coming-weeks-exceeding-100k-by-june-1) and [Business Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-forecasts-100000-coronavirus-deaths-by-june-1-2020-5?r=KINDLYSTOPTRACKINGUS) report about the CDC forecasting 100k deaths by June the 1st, differently.
- Yahoo has automated finance forecast reporting. It took me a while (three months) to notice that the low quality finance articles that were popping up in my google alerts were machine generated. See [Synovus Financial Corp. Earnings Missed Analyst Estimates: Here's What Analysts Are Forecasting Now](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/synovus-financial-corp-earnings-missed-152645825.html), [Wienerberger AG Earnings Missed Analyst Estimates: Here's What Analysts Are Forecasting Now](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wienerberger-ag-earnings-missed-analyst-070545629.html), [Park Lawn Corporation Earnings Missed Analyst Estimates: Here's What Analysts Are Forecasting Now](https://news.yahoo.com/park-lawn-corporation-earnings-missed-120314826.html); they have a similar structure, paragraph per paragraph, and seem to have been generated from a template which changes a little bit depending on the data (they seem to have different templates for very positive, positive, neutral and negative change). To be clear, I could program something like this given a good finance api and a spare week/month, and in fact did so a couple of years ago for an automatic poetry generator. *But I didn't notice because I wasn't paying attention*.
- Yahoo has automated finance forecast reporting. It took me a while (two months) to notice that the low quality finance articles that were popping up in my google alerts were machine generated. See [Synovus Financial Corp. Earnings Missed Analyst Estimates: Here's What Analysts Are Forecasting Now](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/synovus-financial-corp-earnings-missed-152645825.html), [Wienerberger AG Earnings Missed Analyst Estimates: Here's What Analysts Are Forecasting Now](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wienerberger-ag-earnings-missed-analyst-070545629.html), [Park Lawn Corporation Earnings Missed Analyst Estimates: Here's What Analysts Are Forecasting Now](https://news.yahoo.com/park-lawn-corporation-earnings-missed-120314826.html); they have a similar structure, paragraph per paragraph, and seem to have been generated from a template which changes a little bit depending on the data (they seem to have different templates for very positive, positive, neutral and negative change). To be clear, I could program something like this given a good finance api and a spare week/month, and in fact did so a couple of years ago for an automatic poetry generator. *But I didn't notice because I wasn't paying attention*.
- [Sports betting alternatives which are booming during the Corona shutdown](https://thegamehaus.com/sports/sports-betting-alternatives-which-are-booming-during-the-corona-shutdown/2020/05/15/). Suggested alternatives for bettors include e-sports, casinos, politics and reality-tv.
- Some transcient content on 538 about [Biden vs past democratic nomines](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-does-biden-stack-up-to-past-democratic-nominees/), about [Trump vs Biden polls](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-can-pay-attention-to-those-trump-vs-biden-polls-but-be-cautious/) and about [the USA vicepresidential draft](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-time-for-another-2020-vice-presidential-draft/), and an old [review of the impact of VP candidates in USA elections](http://baseballot.blogspot.com/2012/07/politically-veepstakes-isnt-worth.html) which seems to have aged well. 538 also brings us this overview of [models with unrealistic-yet-clearly-stated assumptions](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/); apparently, deaths (not "confirmed deaths", just "deaths") according to John Hopkins University are flat out *linear* from April 1 to May 1.
- [Why Economic Forecasting Is So Difficult in the Pandemic](https://hbr.org/2020/05/why-economic-forecasting-is-so-difficult-in-the-pandemic). Harvard Review Economists share their difficulties. Problems include "not knowing for sure what is going to happen", the government passing legislation uncharacteristically fast, sampling errors and reduced response rates from surveys, and lack of knowledge about epidemiology.