Wednesday, June 13, 2007

How to predict the future with Google!

Today I will show you how to predict the future with Google!

First you need a university job announcement such as this posted at the University of Geneva:


Then you copy the words describing the domain of expertise and past them in Google. In our case, you will have to submit this query. In order to be more effective, you can apply a simple heuristic: being a Swiss university, restrict to the ".ch" internet domain.

Now you can proceed by yourself. You end up (among others) on a Ph.D. thesis written by somebody who happens to hold a temporary position in the same department that is offering the position. (Look carefully at the url: it contains the family name of the author).

Now we have to wait until the position will be assigned to check whether Google really helps in predicting the future.

I have already checked it with another Swiss university and it worked!! Let's see if we can generalize the result...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Nicely done Vic!!! Let's see if it works. I would suggest to try also with non-swiss positions. Probably you will discover many cases like the one you pointed out here.