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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:41AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @08:41AM (#610913)

    I'm certainly not familiar with physics, but I was under the impression that there was an alternative to QFT which is exactly equivalent in its predictions but doesn't require nondeterminism (although I seem to recall it required something else which was unintuitive, though I'd be shocked if it was as unintuitive as nondeterminism).

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:57PM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:57PM (#611111) Journal

    While it does not require non-determinism, it requires hidden variables which we are unable to determine by any physical process. So physical randomness is replaced by guaranteed ignorance. Which doesn't help one bit with predictions.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:21PM

      by Bot (3902) on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:21PM (#611120) Journal

      While it does not require non-determinism, it requires hidden variables.

      Ok, it models non-determinism then.

      --
      Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @02:08PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @02:08PM (#611389)

      Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
      Filter error: Missing Comment.