RE: Wisdom of crowds - the update
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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of JW Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:24 PM To: community@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 ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Wisdom of crowds - the update
2008/6/3 steve [EMAIL PROTECTED]: So the crowd guessed 4000 GTA01? for linux developers only? nope it was 4000 gta02 in the first 2 months from sale date in total (that was the posed question) good to hear about all the niche / large purchaser interest coming through jw ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Wisdom of crowds - the update
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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of JW Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:24 PM To: community@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 ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
