It does look like bookies might want to take a closer look at Microsoft’s Bing, especially when Bing managed yet once again to predict the results of the Scottish referendum correctly – stating that Scotland will continue to be part of the United Kingdom. This is despite the fact that polling data in the weeks that led up to the referendum pointed to an extremely tight race, making it way too close to call, where there was even a near 50-50 split even when the day of the vote drew nearer.
After all of the voted were tallied last night, the results pointed to 55% of Scots having voted ‘no’, which meant that they would prefer to remain as part of the U.K. This is far from being an overwhelming majority, but it definitely is a decisive win over those who voted ‘yes’, having picked up the remainder of the 45% share of the votes.
Microsoft must be proud of Bing’s predictive capabilities, touting that Bing made use of its”machine-learning models to analyse and detect patterns from a range of (big) data sources such as the web and social activity” when it comes to making predictions. However, in terms of the vote breakdown, Bing was not all that accurate, pointing to a far closer race with 51.3% voting ‘no’ while the other 48.7% went for ‘yes’.
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