Today Mark shared this TED video.  It’s a few years old but the interactive nature of these relatively standard bubble charts makes for a powerful presentation.  Rosling used software created by his affiliate gapminder.org. Though we didn’t have that ten years ago, it now occurs to me that we could have simply used a PowerPoint slide presentation to accomplish a similar effect.

In addition to the great graphics, Rosling is both entertaining and thought provoking.  Your thoughts?

Source: TED: Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen, Feb, 2006

I’ve started a mind map of some of the key concepts. It is interactive in the frame above or click on the map to collaborate and add your own information at Mind Meister. Just create a free account. Or, for less than $50 you can create a premium account which will allow you to create an unlimited amount of shared maps. This seems like a neat opportunity to try a relatively new form of collaboration. Tell me what you think in the comments.

For instance and for my own game…

• Do I have a better shot at sinking a mid-range put than a short put because I feel I have less at stake so I relax more on the longer put?
• Does the number of stokes taken to get to the green have a bearing on the probability of making certains puts?  Do I relax more when I’ve already blown the hole versus when I have a shot at an eagle?
• What’s the relationship between warm up time on the practice green to puts made on the real greens?

What do you think?

At Google, we’re constantly trying to find new ways to organize the world’s information, including information relevant to our business.

This article describes how Google uses prediction markets to forcast product launch dates and other important strategic events.  What struck me about the more recent Freakonomics post, however, is that the question changed:

So we decided to move beyond asking, “Do prediction markets work?” and instead use them as a tool for better understanding how information flows within a (very cool) corporation. Information is terrific to theorize about, but hard to measure. That’s where the prediction market is useful: if you and I trade similarly on a market, then we can infer that you share similar information.

Yes!  It’s all in the asking the right questions.  How often have we improved our understanding of a system or event, just by asking the questions from a different perspective?

Predictably, he asks if prediction markets are “the next big thing.”  (Ok, enough with the prediction puns.)

Here are his observations regarding culture and markets:

For a company culture to value prediction markets, its culture would need to have certain (rare) attributes:

• Confidence that executives have valuable roles to play even if they don’t always have the right answer;
• A high level of trust in the intelligence and capabilities of employees;
• The willingness to follow numbers and analysis wherever they lead (as long as they are more-or-less consistent with common sense);
• A pretty strong analytical and financial orientation (since futures markets aren’t something that every Joe or Jane understands).

If you catch his post, be sure to check out the discussion that follows.

Don’t have the game? You should!

Technorati Tags: business intelligence, acquisition, ibm, cognos, PeopleSoft, Siebel