Saturday, February 26, 2005
An economist predicts the Oscar winner.
Why not? Economists are picking presidential races, running casinos, writing political columns, running baseball teams, and doing everything else in the world apart from economics.
So Professor Andrew Bernard of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, fresh from predicting how many medals each nation would win at the 2004 Olympic Games, has produced his Index of Oscar Worthiness for the films nominated for best picture. (Notwithstanding his noting in today's Wall Street Journal that he hasn't seen any of them.)
To get the technical details follow the link. If you just want to see his odds before making a friendly wager with your friends, he gives the probability of winning the best picture award as...
The Aviator, 85%
Million Dollar Baby, 13.2%
Rest of the Field, 1.8%
Tradesports has The Aviatior at only 61%, so if you think you can believe an economist's back-tested data mining, get your money down!
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Update: And the winner is ... Million Dollar Baby.
So much for data mining, back tested or not.
At least it wasn't Sideways.
