{"id":3032,"date":"2012-02-08T14:26:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T18:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/?p=3032"},"modified":"2012-02-08T14:33:06","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T18:33:06","slug":"iowa-electronic-market-fail-republican-presidential-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/2012\/02\/iowa-electronic-market-fail-republican-presidential-primary\/","title":{"rendered":"Iowa Electronic Market Fail &#8211; Santorum in the Republican Presidential Primary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am not very into politics &#8211; but I am into markets, crowds, social, computing, etc.   So when I heard that last night Rick Santorum surprised folks with some Republican primary wins, I figured that I would go and check the <a href=\"http:\/\/tippie.uiowa.edu\/iem\/index.cfm\" target=\"_new\">Iowa Electronic Market<\/a> to see if it was somehow smarter than the other pundits.<\/p>\n<p>Folks like James Surowecki in his book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0385721706\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=drchu02-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=0385721706\">The Wisdom of Crowds<\/a> (which we use in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.si124.com\" target=\"_new\">SI124<\/a> class) like to cite the IEM as a better way to aggregate knowledge than polls.  So I ran to the IEM to see the current trade values for the &#8220;Winner of the Republican Primary&#8221; market. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=drchu02-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=0385721706\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu\/quotes\/356.html\" target=\"_new\">http:\/\/iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu\/quotes\/356.html<\/a> (data)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu\/graphs\/graph_RCONV12.cfm\" target=\"_new\">http:\/\/iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu\/graphs\/graph_RCONV12.cfm<\/a> (Graph)<\/p>\n<p>The numbers in the data indicate the current market price to buy a $1.00 payoff if you guess right.  A summary of the top-candidates as of right now is:<\/p>\n<pre>\r\n\t\tBid\tAsk\tLast\tLow\tHigh\tAverage\r\nROMN_NOM\t0.804\t0.842\t0.804\t0.780\t0.832\t0.804\r\n<b>RROF_NOM\t0.120\t0.135\t0.142\t0.120\t0.159\t0.147<\/b>\r\nPAUL_NOM\t0.015\t0.022\t0.015\t0.015\t0.015\t0.015\r\nGING_NOM\t0.040\t0.046\t0.036\t---\t---\t---\r\nBACH_NOM\t0.001\t0.002\t0.001\t0.001\t0.001\t0.001\r\nPERR_NOM\t0.001\t0.002\t0.001\t0.001\t0.001\t0.001\r\nCAIN_NOM\t0.001\t0.002\t0.001\t0.001\t0.001\t0.001\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>As of this morning, Romney is trending downwards.   The second highest bid is for &#8220;Rest of the field&#8221;.   RROF_NOM is anyone other than the listed folks.  Apparently those who set up the market apparently gave Santorum <strong>so little chance of winning<\/strong> they did not even include him in the list of options.<\/p>\n<p>Funny and kind of a &#8220;fail&#8221; in a way.  But of course it supports James Surowecki&#8217;s concept of the wisdom of the crowds.   I would assume a small group of people at the IEM decided who the six best candidates might be (oops). <\/p>\n<p>It is funny and ironic that there is some non-zero chance that the members of the Iowa Electronic Market will in effect be betting that &#8220;None of the above&#8221; will win.   It will be funny if Santorum gains steam and the bidding goes through the roof for &#8220;none of the above&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I must emphasize that I really am not very political at all and this is not a political post nor a political commentary on anyone in the race.   It is just a really fun example of the concepts in SI124 at work and a teachable moment for my class.   It is fun to teach a class titled, &#8220;Network Thinking&#8221; (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.si124.com\/\" target=\"_new\">SI124<\/a>) during an election year.  :)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am not very into politics &#8211; but I am into markets, crowds, social, computing, etc. So when I heard that last night Rick Santorum surprised folks with some Republican primary wins, I figured that I would go and check the Iowa Electronic Market to see if it was somehow smarter than the other pundits. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3032"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3051,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3032\/revisions\/3051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dr-chuck.com\/csev-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}