The story reminded me kind of the old "bean jar" experiment http://www.jstor.org/pss/4479031 http://www.jstor.org/pss/4479031 Isn't it amazing that you can effe

The story reminded me kind of the old "bean jar" experiment http://www.jstor.org/pss/4479031 http://www.jstor.org/pss/4479031 Isn't it amazing that you can effectively estimate all kind of information by people randomly guessing, as long as the sample is big enough? Scientists are just starting to tap into the data of social networks. In a few years our twitter / facebook profiles might be able to predict the economic growth, or the stock market.