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(03/21/11 4:12am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Can Twitter predict the stock market? An IU research paper said yes, and a hedge fund is staking $40 million on the answer.Having made national headlines in October after publishing his paper, “Twitter mood predicts the stock market,” School of Informatics and Computing professor Johan Bollen could experience a wealthy future as a result of his findings.A London-based hedge fund, Derwent Capital Markets will be placing 25 million pounds — more than $40 million — on the line in hopes that Bollen’s research can accurately predict the stock market in a real-world setting.Bollen found that when looking at mood data extracted from millions of tweets, he could accurately predict the changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average three to four days later with an astonishing 87.6 percent accuracy. After this insight, Bollen put his new research online and there was an almost instant response.“That same weekend my phone was ringing off the hook,” Bollen said. “Colleagues, academics, investors, friends.”Bollen and Huina Mao, co-researcher and post-doctoral student in the School of Informatics, will be looking at 35 percent of the income received from the University’s licensing contract with Derwent Capital Markets, which is pending negotiation.Derwent Capital Markets’ founding director Paul Hawtin brought on Bollen and Mao to be private consultants.“It is very much a partnership,” Hawtin said. “We’ll equally share in the success of the business.”He said there is potential for Bollen and Mao to become very wealthy.Hawtin stressed confidence when he expressed his calculations that his hedge fund will be successful.“I’m talking a consistent 15 to 20 percent absolute returns,” Hawtin said. “If the markets are down a whole year, we’ll still be up 15 to 20 percent.”If they have a successful first month of trading, which begins in May, it could lure in millions more from investors. “I expect by the summer months to be at 50 million pounds,” Hawtin said. HOW IT BEGANIn 2009, Bollen and Mao created a mood mechanism, based on an algorithm which extracts and places Twitter users’ tweets into six mood categories: tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue and confusion. Bollen put his research paper online after it was rejected from several publishers. “People have been using blog analysis and news analysis, so people have been using this,” Bollen said. “It could also be that we were the only fools that published their results.” Despite the rejections, the value of his work was proved through citations from eight academic papers who all found interest in his research, although the work remained unpublished.It’s been dubbed “The Twitter Predictor” by CNBC. “That’s what they call it,” Bollen said. “In the paper, at least, it’s not intended to predict anything. The only thing we said was this contains information that seems to have predictive power towards the stock market.”Bollen, who has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology, is working in a field of research labeled sentiment analysis. He said it’s a new science aimed at developing mechanisms that can extract sentiment or mood from text. “I chose psychology because I was interested in mechanics of behavior and thought,” Bollen said. After his 2009 paper on Twitter mood analysis was rejected, he said he saw the stock market as a possible way to validate his mood extraction mechanism research, not use it as a predictive tool.“If you have a new measurement tool, you prove that the measurements that tool produces are valid by comparing it to other existing measurements you know to be valid,” Bollen said. “If they match, then you know the new thing is probably also valid. One of the best correlations we found was actually with the stock market.”The sentiment data from Twitter was a precursor, not an expression, of stock market performance.“It wasn’t a day-to-day correlation; the correlation was only significant when we shifted the mood graph forward by three to four days,” Bollen said. “Which means we were correlating the mood of three or four days ago with today’s stock market.”MAKING IT BIGHawtin had been working at Derwent Capital Markets for more than two years, amassing relationships with wealthy investors across Europe. One day in October, he was sitting in his London office gazing into his trading screen and saw a headline describing Bollen’s findings. “Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things that come around like this all the time,” Hawtin said.But Hawtin said he felt little skepticism after studying Bollen’s research. In December, only two months later, he found himself meeting with Bollen to discuss his research.“When I read the paper and the depth they had gone through, I knew there was some credibility to this,” Hawtin said. “I really believed the underlying theory as well.”Several emails later, Derwent Capital Markets contacted IU to begin negotiations to exclusively license the intellectual property that Bollen developed.Despite the prediction power of his Twitter sentiment extraction tool that excited everyone else, Bollen said he wasn’t expecting such a gamut of coverage. “I never anticipated this much attention,” Bollen said. “I thought it was a cool finding but did not expect everyone to go berserk over this.”The hedge fund, which Hawtin said will become open for investment April 1, already has 25 million pounds pledged from a network of investors. “I’m getting inquiries every day from interested parties,” Hawtin said. Mao said she believes ongoing work by other academics further validates their research.“Especially in the past year there is more and more research trying to prove the predictive power of social media,” Mao said. “So it seems there’s more and more evidence to prove the idea that we already have.”
(02/12/10 3:58am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Rappers and congressmen are not typically associated with each other, but Kanye West and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., have changed that in breaking civil discourse.The Commission on Multicultural Understanding will sponsor a workshop examining civil dialogue on campus called “What Did You Say?!” The event will occur from noon to 1:30 p.m. Friday in State Room East in the Indiana Memorial Union. The workshop was inspired by events such as Kanye West’s outburst at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards and Congressman Joe Wilson calling President Obama a liar during a presidential address.“The event is the result of the two committees within COMU, Training and Teachable Moments,” said graduate assistant of COMU Nadrea Njoku.Members from each committee will moderate the program.“We can’t even communicate without demonizing each other anymore,” said co-convener of the training committee Eric Love.The Training Committee realized issues of uncivil discourse were just as present on campus as elsewhere.“I expect a lot of students who are interested in the topic who have noticed something needs to change,” Love said. “I’m certainly not the only social critic that’s seen a need for this.”The workshop aims to be interactive, with participants having the opportunity to practice civil dialogue. Featured will be video clips, methods of how to engage in civil dialogue and how to properly disarm people who are being disrespectful.“This is not only a serious issue in the public eye but in everyday life,” Njoku said.The workshop’s organizers have already received a positive response to the posting.“Several people asked if we would be doing it again already, so I imagine if there’s a high demand we will do it again in the near future,” Love said.
(09/18/09 3:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Grants awarded this fiscal year were nearly even with 2008, considering the Lilly Endowment, a major source of private funding, awarded drastically less money to IU this year.IU was awarded $469 million in grant money for 2009 fiscal year from a combination of federal, state and private organizations.This is a decrease of 10 percent, or $55 million, from fiscal year 2008. The $55 million drop is mostly attributable to the decrease in Lilly Endowment funds from $71 million in 2008 to $20 million in 2009, according to a 2009 fiscal year report.Excluding the Lilly drop, other funding was only down about $4 million.“Lilly Endowment, every few years, has provided some very large awards to address a particular need,” said Steve Martin, associate vice president for research administration. “We only submit a proposal when Lilly Endowment expects us to do so.”University administrators have expressed their contentment with this year’s awards. “Overall, it looks like we’re doing pretty well given the country’s overall economic situation,” University spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.Of the money received, $242 million is from federal agencies, according to the report.“I think last year truly was a record year,” Martin said. “I think (this year) we did surprisingly well.” During fiscal year 2009, 4,991 grant proposals were submitted University-wide. Of those, 2,750 were awarded.The amount of grant proposals the University submitted increased by 15 percent from the previous year. “One of the reasons IU did well was we’re continuing to increase the amount of grant proposals,” MacIntyre said.IUB received 952 awards, totaling $137.9 million. Although IU-Bloomington received 80 more awards than the previous year, the dollar amount is a $53.3 million decrease. That means the University is receiving more, but smaller, grants.The large remainder of the funds awarded to the University were allocated to IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, with the School of Medicine alone receiving $239.9 million.Proposals are submitted continuously, and there is a significant lag between proposal and award.“We submit proposals year around. It never stops,” Martin said. “We have proposals coming in on a daily basis.”Some have high expectations for next year’s proposals due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – a federal stimulus covering a wide range of sectors, including education.“I think next year we’re poised to do even better because there is Recovery Act money we’re submitting proposals for,” Martin said.
(08/28/09 3:36am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As students are situating themselves on campus, local employers are
looking for part-time labor through the annual Fall Jobs Fair.
The job fair is from 9 to 11 a.m. Friday for work-study students and
then 1 to 3 p.m. for all students. For a listing of the employers
attending the fair, students can look on their myIUcareers account at
www.indiana.edu/~career/services/jobs_internships/iucareers.php.
Lou Ann Hanson, associate director of administrative services at the IU
Career Development Center, said she is hopeful for a large turnout at
this year’s fair, partly because of the bad economy.
“More students may be looking for part-time jobs to help supplement what mom and dad can give,” Hanson said.
Most attendees are freshmen, but upperclassmen are showing an interest as well.
Last year, 1,800 students attended, up 250 from 2007.
“Tuition was already expensive for out-of-state students,” sophomore Jason Eckhart said. “Raising it this year isn’t helping.”
Hanson said a 60 to 75 percent of the students who attend the fair find
jobs. These students don’t necessarily get hired at the fair, but
through interviews and call-backs.
Employers said they’re willing to work with students’ class schedules.
“We’re pretty flexible, but working here until four, five in the morning takes a toll,” said
Jesse Bloom, who manages the Pizza X restaurants near campus.
Hanson said employers realize students have to go to class and have academic priorities.
“The part-time employers that come to this event know that school comes
first, so it’s usually eight to 10 hours a week,” she said.
Students do not need to compile a resume for the fair.
“It would help, but we don’t want to scare anybody off because most of the freshmen may not have one,” Hanson said.
(08/27/09 1:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“The Goods” is an unkempt comedy starring Jeremy Piven as Don “The Goods” Ready, a gun-for-hire in the used car business. Ready proudly wields a motel-chain’s membership card and enjoys breakfast at strip clubs. He’s sharp and full of one-liners, though most of them fall flat.Piven’s performance is nothing new. Don Ready is his “Entourage” charater Ari Gold’ssleazy brother, only sporting sideburns and a hustler’s button-up instead of designer sunglasses and a power suit. The inherent “Entourage” association is furthered by Piven shouting “Babs!” which fans will undoubtedly link to Gold’s agent partner on the HBO comedy.One bright spot is a surprise cameo by an Abraham Lincoln-impersonating Will Ferrell, who howls “Just like John Wilkes Booth our prices are going to sneak up behind you and blow your brains out.”But though Ferrell’s role, among others, was welcome at first, it ultimately hurt the film, because it reminded me that there are much more capable comedy scripts out there.
(04/30/09 4:21am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“The Spirit” is writer-director Frank Miller’s latest adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic book bearing the same title. The film inherently draws comparison to Miller’s directorial debut, “Sin City,” another graphic novel he created.Moviegoers will quickly notice the stylistic similarities to “Sin City” – the film-noir ambiance, the rotoscoping, the animation of live-action and the copious amount of bright red blood juxtaposed against black and white backgrounds. These techniques all worked wonderfully for Miller the first time, but far too much was borrowed, and this film reeked of laziness. Maybe if the character development was interesting it would provide a veil for the perpetual stylistic copying, but it doesn’t by any means.Gabriel Macht stars as police officer Denny Colt, a masked cop who patrols Central City – a place where its inhabitants aren’t sure what year it is. Characters are generally dressed in ‘60s garb, but also accessorize with Nokia cell phones. Macht is seemingly devoid of emotion, delivering too many cheesy one-liners that repeatedly fall flat. Samuel L. Jackson plays the Octopus, the movie’s flamboyant villain. His motives for world domination are as aimless as his costume changes. He appears as a cowboy, a samurai, a Nazi and finally sticks with a fur coat and plenty of blue eyeliner.The Octopus’ aim is to track down and drink the blood of Hercules, achieving immortality. But where Macht’s performance is robotic, Jackson’s is over-the-top and annoyingly vivacious.The script grants no reason for anyone to care about these characters – providing the audience with a lack of connection. Dialogue is carried out awkwardly, and critical conversations appear unnatural.The DVD includes many extras, such as an insightful commentary with Miller and producer Deborah Del Prete. Also included is a feature called “Green World,” which offers an extensive examination on the film’s use of green-screen techniques. Buyers get to see an alternate storyboard ending, which proves fairly interesting.Though “The Spirit” is a messy comic book adaptation at best, the DVD extras may win over fans of the comic book and those looking for eye candy.