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A comment on XKCD's Randall Munroe runs Monte Carlo on Intrade's per-state markets .

Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe runs Monte Carlo on Intrade's per-s... by mdxch on Saturday October 04, 2008 @11:28AM (#323509)
Betting sites like Intrade are lagging indicators with respect to the polls. Bettors adjust their bets whenever new polls are released, but it doesn't generally work the other way around (people responding to pollsters don't do so on the basis of what they saw on Intrade).
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Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe runs Monte Carlo on Intrade's per-s... by tptacek on Saturday October 04, 2008 @12:08PM (#323531)
That sounds like a valid point, but bear in mind that a lot of research has been done on the IEM's (more credible than Intrade), and they are more predictive than polls.
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Re:XKCD's Randall Munroe runs Monte Carlo on Intrade's per-s... by steveplace on Saturday October 04, 2008 @12:56PM (#323548)
I disagree. I think prediction markets are better because people are risking money. Of course they adjust based on sentiment and other external factors, but I do think it's superior to traditional polling that has significant sampling and measurement problems.
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