So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 12) How to tell the future in one easy acronym

Happy Tuesday morning! (This is when I assume you're reading this.) Tuesday night is the season premiere of the seventh and final season of Sons of Anarchy. You may recall that I recapped this show for Television Without Pity. I did not find a new place to write recaps, but I did find a dude who's into the show and we're going to be doing a post-ep recap/reaction podcast every week. Once we have everything set up, I'll spill all the details.

In the meantime, tweet me your best guesses as to which in-the-credits character is going to get killed first. My bet's on Unser.

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There really are people who are better at discerning the future than the rest of us, and they don't use a crystal ball to do it. According to social scientists Philip Tetlock, Don Moore and Barbara Mellers, people become "superforecasters" because of how they think about a subject, not because of what they know about a subject. In other words, it's all in the approach, and the approach is broken down into this handy acronym: CHAMP. Comparisons of a situation are important, so use them as a starting point; an understanding of historical cycles can inform future predictions; experts often disagree, so average out their opinions; use mathematical models when relevant; understand your own predictable biases and don't be afraid to rethink your positions.

So what? Predictive modeling and forecasting takes place across many industries and through many, many levels of government. If you're staring down someone else's predictions, it doesn't hurt to see if you can figure out how they were made and what their weaknesses are. (Alternately, you can become good at predictions in your own right and become the next Nate Silver-esque soothsayer.)

Who cares? Anyone who is ever pelted with sales pitches that rely heavily on predictions and forecasts. So, you know, anyone in the U.S.

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Buzzfeed is a popular piñata among journo types, but its success is worth looking at, if only for the prominent role data mining and analysis has in determining how the site directs coverage. This profile of Buzzfeed's head of data and growth, Dao Nguyen, points out how big data can actually work in the real world: It works when people clearly identify a problem, know what data they need to crunch, then translate the data results into tangible to-dos in implementing a solution. The story about weekend homepage scheduling is perfectly illustrative.

So what? The big problem with big data has, thus far, been about solutions to problems that don't exist. Buzzfeed's use case here makes the argument that they have a corporate culture of turning numbers into action items. This more or less bolsters the emerging argument that the reason Buzzfeed is getting grabillions in funding is because it's not a media company; it's a technology company that happens to use media as the fungible for its real business model, making cool software it can sell (or sell access too).

Who cares? At the risk of getting navel-gaze-y: Anyone who creates content should. There's the old metaphor that floats around San Francisco/Silicon Valley during booms like this: That plenty of people can pan for gold, but becoming Levi Strauss and supplying the gold miners with their must-haves is your real long-term moneymaker. The Buzzfeed narrative as it's shaping up is a graphic illustration of selling the tools and treating content as a delightful side effect.

But this is good news for anyone who needs to make a use case for big data tools in their company. The argument that "We can find new channels for growth! For real!" is a compelling one.

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One area where big data has moved beyond such powerful inquiries as "Which insultingly anodyne 'parenting' post will Buzzfeed try out on the front page now?" Weather forecasting and modeling. USA Today is doing a phenomenal series on climate change and how it's likely to reshape the world in ways big and small, and the piece on rising sea levels in tidewater Virginia hit close to my (former) home. I can remember my dad saying Willoughby Spit would probably be taken out by a hurricane; instead, it's slow death by a dozen storms.

So what? Changing shorelines will affect everything from the vacation industry to the insurance industry to real estate markets all over the place. You may not weep for the waterfront home owners whose definition of "waterfront" has suddenly shifted. But chew on this: in Florida, thanks to insurers who routinely exclude flood and storm surge damage from policies, waterfront property owners get their (comparatively cheap) coverage from the tax-dollar-backed National Flood Insurance Program. So there has arisen a situation in which middle class taxpayers from across the U.S.A. are subsidizing both richer waterfront owners' insurance and the insurance industry's overall risks.

Who cares? Anyone who is probably not thrilled about helping insurance companies in the U.S. continue to rake in the dollars. Also, some folks might take exception to underwriting other people's decisions to live on the very edge of what is essentially a floating peninsula.

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So? Thinking about waterfront property? Got any other comments after reading? Tweet me or email me. Thanks for reading -- and if you really like it, tell a friend. Tell five! Tell as many as you have!