Why predicting online learning developments is risky but necessary — from Tony Bates

Excerpt:

Before drawing up my outlook for 2013, I want to discuss the important topic of prediction in online learning, in particular how predictions are made, and what value they may have. Nate Silver’s excellent book (references are at the end of this article) looks at prediction in a number of fields: weather forecasting (excellent up to three days, useless after eight days), economic forecasting (hopeless by both media pundits and professional economists), baseball players’ performance (pretty good and improving), earthquakes (bad for major quakes, but promising for lesser quakes), poker and a number of other areas. He also has some interesting reflections on big data as well. Unfortunately though he doesn’t discuss prediction in online learning, so I’ll try and help out with this!