Researchers Mine Old News To Predict Future Events

You mean by looking at twenty years of newspaper articles they were able to predict that there will be a large increase in the number of cases of influenza during November 2013 to March 2014 compared to the preceding 5 months?

Or, when disaster causes infrastructure to break down and crowds refugees into unsanitary temporary housing there's a high likelyhood of more cholera breaking out than at other times?

Gee. Color me impressed.

How is this greatly different than many different types of analysts have been doing for decades via headline counts in world newspapers and the like? (See John Naisbitt of Megatrends fame, for example. And he certainly wasn't the first.)

The math used to find the probabilities may be a bit better, and it may be more automated, but it's not particularly new.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/aJkdpzfcEj0/story01.htm

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