Wisdom of crowds - the update

[Lee Grime]

Steve,

You are assuming that neo customers follow a 1st order model.  2nd order
would be +10x -5x +3x -1 sinc function.

On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 10:34 -0700, steve wrote:
> well I am a big fan of the wisdom of crowds. 
> 
>  
> 
> I am a big fan of the army of davids
> 
>  
> 
> That said, I also understand the limitations of these methods.
> 
>  
> 
> My method is brutally numeric. this is my training. You begin with a
> demand forecast. Lets say “X per week.”
> 
>  
> 
> actually, it’s more sophisticated than that since products go through
> an initial SURGE and then they settle into
> 
> a regular run rate. For example. at launch you might see  10X units
> per week for 1-3 weeks, and then it would 
> 
> taper off to 5X, 3X, 1X.  Engineers here will recognize this response
> function. response to a impulse.
> 
>  
> 
> basically I track the data on weekly basis and use that to guess  the
> entire demand curve. more data equals better estimate.
> 
>  
> 
> When a product hits the run rate ( linear) part of the demand curve,
> then a monkey can do the math. hey boss I sold 1 million
> 
> last month. I bet  I’ll sell a million next month!” thanks monkey.
> here’s a banana.
> 
>  
> 
> The big risk is the guessing the intitial impulse. make sense? 
> 
>  
> 
> The other thing that everybody misses is the markets they don’t know
> about.
> 
>  
> 
> I have a forecast for Linux Mobile developers. Call that number X.
> 
>  
> 
> Then I get a call from University XYZ. they want Neo.
> 
> Then I get a call from medical company PDQ. they want Neos.
> 
>  
> 
> and the list goes on. adjust demand curves.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> So the crowd guessed 4000 GTA01? for linux developers only?
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> pretty damn close. But supply constraints biased  the result.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>                                    
> ______________________________________________________________________
> From:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org
> [mailto:community-bounces at lists.openmoko.org] On Behalf Of JW
> Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:24 PM
> To: community at lists.openmoko.org
> Subject: Wisdom of crowds - the update
> 
> 
>  
> 
> hi steve & community
> 
> once upon a time a long, long time ago tim kersten set up a site to
> track "the wisdom of crowds" [1] with regard to the question "how many
> freerunners will FIC sell in the first two months"
> 
> the answer can be seen here (click the stats tab)
> http://openmoko.hobby-site.com/ and is remarkably consistent at a
> median value of 4000 after over 1000 people voted.    In fact this
> number has stayed very close to 4000 since the low hundreds of votes.
> 
> so are you going to ask the webshop/pulster/trisoft/whoever to keep
> track of the real number for you?  .....after all, if it turns out to
> be accurate you can use this method for planning your next product!
> 
> and are you going to tell us how accurate it was :-) ?
> 
> actually the rules for the "wisdom of a crowd" to be accurate demand
> that each guess is independent..... and here we have a little
> pollution in that it is possible for you to see others votes before
> you vote yourself (although many will not have bothered)
> 
> anyway.... it gave us something to do while you folks were busy making
> phones....
> 
> i reckon it saved at least 12 useless messages to list by frustrated
> geeks......  (and oops  created only 9 more....)
> 
> actually next time we could always use it to guess the release date
> for son of freerunner ....
> 
> jw
> 
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds
> 
> 
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