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posted by janrinok on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the that-sums-it-up dept.

The answer should be NO, but, do you think this would work ?

Good scientists are not only able to uncover patterns in the things they study, but to use this information to predict the future. Meteorologists study atmospheric pressure and wind speed to predict the trajectories of future storms. A biologist may predict the growth of a tumor based on its current size and development. A financial analyst may try to predict the ups and downs of a stock based on things like market capitalization or cash flow.

Perhaps even more interesting than the above phenomena is that of predicting the behavior of human beings. Attempts to predict how people will behave have existed since the origins of humankind. Early humans had to trust their instincts. Today, marketers, politicians, trial lawyers and more make their living on predicting human behavior. Predicting human behavior, in all of its forms, is big business. So, how does mathematics do in predicting our own behavior in general? Despite advances in stock market analytics, economics, political polling and cognitive neuroscience – all of which ultimately endeavor to predict human behavior – science may never be able to do so with perfect certainty.

[...] As technology develops, scientists may find that we can predict human behavior rather well in one area, while still lacking in another. It's very difficult to give an overall sense of the limitations. For instance, facial recognition may be easier to emulate because vision is one of many human sensory processing systems, or because there are only so many ways faces can differ. On the other hand, predicting voting behavior, especially based on the 2016 presidential election, is quite another story. There are many complex and not yet understood reasons why humans do what they do.

Still others argue that, theoretically at least, that perfect prediction will someday be possible. Until then, with any luck, mathematics and statistics may help us increasingly account for what people, on average, will do next.

https://theconversation.com/can-math-predict-what-youll-do-next-78892


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:07AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:07AM (#610903)

    If I trust anyone it's someone with no maths background who's main character totally fails and the story has coal powered space ships and walnut sized nuclear you where around your neck... foundation has no foundation

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:03AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:03AM (#610924)

    walnut sized nuclear you where around your neck

    Wear do you sea it saying anything about nuclear warnuts? Do you not feer the Grammar Nazis of SoylentNews? They have no mercy. They will mercilessly mock you for your lack of erudition and litter ansy.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:38PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:38PM (#611029) Journal

      I don't recall the coal fired spaceships...perhaps that wasn't in the Foundation stories, but the Walnut sized nuclear power generator was in Foundation and Empire, when the trader visits the power plant in the old Empire.

      OTOH, modern smoke detectors have nuclear power generators smaller than that. They don't make *much* power, just enough to detect smoke, but they exist. And they use trans-uranium elements (Americium IIRC). (You still need an external power supply to handle the heavy stuff, like running circuits, though.)

      For a more potent small power supply, consider the power supply of the space craft headed out past Jupiter. It's not quite as small, but it puts out enough power to actually run the thing for decades.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.