Use Probability Models to Predict Pebble Sales (and win a Pebble)

http://blog.custora.com/2012/04/competiton-projecting-pebble-sales/

by pospischil • 14 years ago

34 10 14 years ago

blog.custora.com

mattmillr• 14 years ago

I seem to recall reading somewhere that most kickstarter projects get the bulk of their support at the very beginning and end, with a "trough" in the middle. It seems like a good prediction model would take this into account, perhaps by integrating data from a number of similar projects that have finished funding (big-$$ games, other hardware projects, etc.)

gauravk923• 14 years ago

You would need historical data then, which I doubt kick starter would provide. Only way is to check the amount and # of backers every minute, on every page, unless I'm missing something. This would be incredibly useful information for people looking to use kickstarter, but I don't think kickstarter would be too happy about that being readily available. IMHO, all the more reason to get it.

aaronjg• 14 years ago

I wrote a perl script to pull data from kickstarter. The backers page on the kickstarter page lists all of the backers, and the date that they made their pledge. I wrote a script to pull these dates.

Data are only available at day level granularity, but it's pretty good. Check it out on the bottom of the post.

akavi• 14 years ago

My suspicion is that the wave of support at the end is for projects that haven't yet reached the funding threshold (thus, backers have an incentive to push friends/family/twitter followers to also fund the project).

I'd be somewhat surprised if said final wave occurred for projects like this, which blow past the threshold well before the deadline.

jgeralnik• 14 years ago

On the other hand it may be people who are on the fence about supporting or not and with the time whittling down decide to go for it.

abiekatz• 14 years ago

I think another part of why people support (product-driven) projects last minute is that people are debating whether they want one. There is no consequence to wait for the last minute and I bet many people, myself included, are debating whether it is worth buying one.

pdhborges• 14 years ago

If I make the best guess by just looking at the current chart without using any tool/model do I qualify for the prize?

anuraj• 14 years ago

My guess is $10m. We shall see what we shall see. I will extrapolate post facto.

Use Probability Models to Predict Pebble Sales (and win a Pebble)

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