Global Prediction Model
I have a Masters degree in Operations Research .. OR is a subject thats fascinated me since my undergraduate days at BITS, Pilani. I have always loved the simplicity and elegance of its solutions ..
When I decided that I wanted to do my Masters in OR, I applied to several schools including the London School of Economics (LSE). There are a few scholarships offered in India to students who want to study at the LSE. One of them is the Inlaks scholarship.
I was shortlisted for the final round of interviews for which I went to Delhi. One of the questions that was asked was, what I would do with my Masters degree especially if I got it from the LSE.
I then told them about the Global Prediction Model.
I agree with Einstein when he said that he didnt believe that God played dice with the universe. I believe that there is a deep rooted underlying logic to the happenings in the world. And hence, I believed that there could be a model thats built that could predict events in the world.
Lets take war/civil unrest for example. There have been countless wars in the past 100 years. If we could prepare a list of each of these wars and then identify the values of some of the underlying statistics - GDP growth, unemployment, religious ratio, temperature, food shortage, rain, agricultural failures, epidemics, political change etc ...
The next step would be to identify the relationship between war and these variables.
The relationship would be something like this:
War occurs
if
{GDP Growth < 0.2% AND Political System = Dictatorship AND Rain < 50% of Normal}
OR
{Epidemic = "Severe"}
Of course the above example is an oversimplification, but I hope you guys get the idea ...
Using this model, we could then predict where the next war will be by monitoring the values of all of these variables.
This could be information that could be sold to multinational corporations - Knowledge of upcoming wars would be critical for them so that they would know where to expand and where to reduce investments ....
When I decided that I wanted to do my Masters in OR, I applied to several schools including the London School of Economics (LSE). There are a few scholarships offered in India to students who want to study at the LSE. One of them is the Inlaks scholarship.
I was shortlisted for the final round of interviews for which I went to Delhi. One of the questions that was asked was, what I would do with my Masters degree especially if I got it from the LSE.
I then told them about the Global Prediction Model.
I agree with Einstein when he said that he didnt believe that God played dice with the universe. I believe that there is a deep rooted underlying logic to the happenings in the world. And hence, I believed that there could be a model thats built that could predict events in the world.
Lets take war/civil unrest for example. There have been countless wars in the past 100 years. If we could prepare a list of each of these wars and then identify the values of some of the underlying statistics - GDP growth, unemployment, religious ratio, temperature, food shortage, rain, agricultural failures, epidemics, political change etc ...
The next step would be to identify the relationship between war and these variables.
The relationship would be something like this:
War occurs
if
{GDP Growth < 0.2% AND Political System = Dictatorship AND Rain < 50% of Normal}
OR
{Epidemic = "Severe"}
Of course the above example is an oversimplification, but I hope you guys get the idea ...
Using this model, we could then predict where the next war will be by monitoring the values of all of these variables.
This could be information that could be sold to multinational corporations - Knowledge of upcoming wars would be critical for them so that they would know where to expand and where to reduce investments ....
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