Latest news with #prediction
New York Times
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Lightning are a lock to go deep, and other lessons from the NHL playoffs prediction contest
And then there were two. And soon, just one winner. No, this isn't a Stanley Cup preview post that accidentally ran a few days early. It's an update on the annual playoff prediction contest, which is already over for almost all of you. We'll get to that in a bit. But first, a refresher. This is the contest that seems simple, because it's only one question: Name as many or as few playoff teams as you'd like based on how many games they'll win, in order from most to least. That's it. We even give you the benefit of the doubt on ties, because we want you to succeed. But you don't. Did I mention that you're not good at this? Because you're not. Advertisement You can find this year's contest post here, and if you entered, you can find your answer by heading to the comment section of that post and using the dropdown to select 'my comments.' But you probably don't want to do that, because spoiler alert, there's a roughly 99.8 percent chance that you're out of the running. Let's get into what happened and why you're bad at this. We had 1,054 entries this year, which is basically the same as the year before. By the way, last year was the first time we tried this, so everyone was flying blind. This time, we at least have something to compare to, as well as (in theory) a strategy that worked once already. Of those thousand or so entries, 79 of you went all out and listed 16 teams. As always, I admire your self-confidence. Also, as always, none of you came close. In fact, every one of those entries was out by the end of the first round. A few were out even sooner because they submitted impossible entries (like having two teams from one matchup both ahead of two teams from another). Just observationally, there seemed to be a very high crossover between those of you with the inflated ego to list 16 teams and those of you who thought Dallas was going to lose to Colorado. Do with that information what you will, Stars fans. I will offer some congratulations to three entries — Adam H., Dan K. and Rubens M. — who submitted 16 teams and at least got the winners of all eight first-round series correct. They still had the order wrong, but going 8 for 8 on matchups is at least mildly impressive. The other 76 of you full-ballot types couldn't even manage that. A further eight of you went with 15 entries, three of you tried 14, and six settled for 13. At the other end of the scale, 10 of you went with just three teams, a dozen of you went with two, and three of you got cute by listing just one team for a guaranteed 'right' answer that was presumably counting on an upset-laded playoffs taking everyone else out while banking enough wins to own the tie-breaker. Of those three, two of you took teams that went out in the first round and the only one who didn't had Toronto, so … yeah, this strategy did not work. Advertisement Not surprisingly, the most common number of entries was eight, which was how many last year's winner used. There are 281 of you with eight entries, edging out the 250 who had six. It's always fun with these contests to try to figure out what your entries might tell us about who you do and don't believe in. In this case, that means running the numbers to see which teams were most often listed first on an entry (implying that lots of you thought they'd go far) and which ones were last (implying that you thought they'd be out early). There's not quite a direct correlation, mind you, because this is a contest where intentionally veering away from the mainstream might be a viable strategy, but it's still interesting. With that in mind, here's how often each team was listed as the first team on an entry: Hm. So our collective top five didn't even make it out of Round 2, including two first-round exits. If anything, my main takeaway here is that the narrative that's already forming around the Panthers — that they were always a playoff-honed sleeping giant and we all knew they'd be dangerous once the games really mattered — is nonsense. Here's how often each team was listed last: This feels a little more reasonable, with the top-six teams all being first-round casualties. But the Lightning stand out, all the way at the bottom of the list. They were out in five games in an opening round that had no sweeps, meaning everyone who picked them here was technically right. But that was only 11 of you, meaning 99 percent of you figured they'd do better than they did. Don't worry, you weren't the only dummies who felt that way. We don't know … yet. But we can narrow it down to two contenders. First things first: For the second straight year of the contest, the magic number for teams is indeed going to be eight. Of the 273 entries that listed nine or more teams, every single on was already dead by the time the conference finals started. Advertisement But three contestants listed eight teams and were still alive. That included two — Matt G. and Gaurav A. — who only had Carolina left on their entry, meaning they were guaranteed a correct answer. Both entries included the Hurricanes, Jets, Capitals, Devils and Habs. But Gaurav's remaining trio of Toronto, Los Angeles and Ottawa produced one more win than Matt's mix of Vegas, St. Louis and Minnesota, giving Gaurav the tie-breaker and leaving Matt with no hope of taking the crown. So who's left to stand in Gaurav's way? That would be Tony D. He also has eight teams listed, but his list included all four conference finalists, meaning he's running away with the tie-breaker … if he can stick the landing. Here's what his entry looks like: Tony D. — Edmonton, Florida, Dallas, Carolina, Vegas, Washington, Minnesota, Ottawa He came into this week already home and cooled out on those last four teams. But he still needed three things to happen: • Edmonton and Florida win their conference finals. Mission accomplished. • Carolina does not win more games than Dallas while losing. Another hit. • And finally, Edmonton has to beat Florida in their Cup final rematch. To be determined. So if the Oilers win the Cup, Tony D. will take the crown and become our second champion. (He'll also set the record for best score ever, narrowly edging out last year's winner, Sean M., who had eight teams and 52 wins. No, not me, we mean the smart Sean M.) If not, Gaurav is our champion. So there you have it … there's something to play for over the weekend and beyond. Well, that and the Stanley Cup — if you're into that sort of thing. (Photo of Nikita Kucherov: Mike Carlson / Getty Images)
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Tourists are cancelling trips to popular destination after psychic dubbed the 'new Baba Vanga' makes terrifying prediction for just two months' time
Tourists are cancelling their trips abroad after a woman who has been referred to as Japan 's 'Baba Vanga' made a terrifying prediction for a disaster set to strike in just two months' time. Baba Vanga, the renowned blind Bulgarian mystic, was known for her bleak but accurate predictions. Despite having passed away in 1996, she eerily predicted world events including the 9/11 attacks and the death of Princess Diana. Now, Ryo Tatsuki, who has been heralded as Japan's answer to the famed prophet, has warned that 'a crack will open up under the seabed between Japan and the Philippines, sending ashore waves three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake ', CNN reports. In 1999, after consistently having what she described as visions of the future, Tatsuki released her book which was titled, 'The Future I Saw'. In it, she detailed the eerie visions that she'd had, some of which have since come true. In 2021, Tatsuki released an updated version of 'The Future I Saw' which included a prediction of a major disaster in mid-2025. Now, as the date draws closer, many travellers who had holidays booked to Japan for July are getting cold feet and postponing their trips or cancelling altogether. According to CN Yuen, managing director of WWPKG, a travel agency based in Hong Kong, bookings to Japan dropped by half during the Easter holiday. This is expected to dip even further in the coming two months in the leadup to the premonition date. Tourists from China and Hong Kong, which are the country's second- and fourth-largest sources of tourists, respectively, have been the most likely to cancel or postpone their Japan travel plans. This was further exacerbated after China's embassy in Tokyo stoked concerns by releasing an official warning to Chinese citizens in late April to take caution when travelling, studying or buying real estate in Japan. But the panic has since spread to other markets including Thailand and Vietnam, where social media platforms have been flooded with Tatsuki's prediction, warning travellers to reconsider their holidays to Japan. Japanese officials have since attempted to quell the panic with a series of official statements to reassure travellers that these were simply 'unscientific rumours'. 'It would be a major problem if the spread of unscientific rumours on social media had an effect on tourism,' Yoshihiro Murai, governor of Miyagi prefecture, said at a press conference on Wednesday. 'There is no reason to worry because Japanese are not fleeing abroad … I hope people will ignore the rumours and visit.' To date, Tatuski's most accurate prediction was that a major disaster would occur in March 2011. Sure enough, in March 2011, Japan was hit by a devastating 9.1 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in the northern Tohoku region which ended up claiming the lives of over 18,000 people. It's also thought that the author and artist predicted the death of Queen's Freddie Mercury as well as the 1995 Kobe earthquake. However, many remain sceptical of Tatsuki's predictions. Critics point out that the Manga artist has always insisted that some of her dreams are purely symbolic, including a premonition that she would die in 2000 and that Mount Fuji would erupt. Despite this, psychics from Japan and Hong Kong have since shared similar warnings of a catastrophic disaster taking place in July 2025, inadvertently adding to the panic. In her predictions for the Year of the Snake, feng shui master Qi Xian Yu, who is also often referred to as Master Seven, said: 'The coming year will see more natural disasters such as earthquakes and fires, and traffic and aviation accidents. We should also be careful of travelling to countries in the northeast direction, such as Japan and South Korea.' Japan is no stranger to earthquakes, being situated along the Ring of Fire, an area that is notorious for its intense seismic and volcanic activity. There have been mounting fears of the 'big one' ever since the Japanese government warned back in January that there was an 80 per cent chance of a severe earthquake hitting the country's southern Nankai Trough within 30 years. According to Tokyo's metropolitan government, 'Nankai Trough earthquakes are massive quakes that have repeatedly occurred at an interval of approximately every 100 to 150 years with their epicentral areas located along the plate boundary between Suruga Bay in the central prefecture of Shizuoka and the Hyuganada Sea off the southern main island of Kyushu'. The Nankai Trough is a 700-kilometer long zone where the tectonic plates slip beneath each other, this means the most powerful typically occur in these zones. The reason for the panic is because the tectonic plate under the Philippine Sea is slowly slipping beneath the continental plate that Japan sits upon. According to a 2013 report by the government's Earthquake Research Committee, this plate moves a few centimeters every year. Earthquakes at the Nankai Trough have been recorded every 100 to 200 years and the last quakes took place in 1944 and 1946, which both reportedly measured 8.1 in magnitude and caused 2,500 total deaths as well as thousands thousands of injuries and destroyed homes. Oracle Ryo claimed she began having premonitions in the early 1980s after a number of her vivid dreams came true. Her book has recently gained renewed interest after a number of her premonitions made in hindsight appeared to mirror real life events. She claims to have seen images of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury dying suddenly in a dream on November 24, 1976. Exactly 15 years to the day later, the singer died aged 45 from complications of having AIDS. She is also thought to have predicted the death of Princess Diana. A year after later, Tatsuki claimed she had a dream in which she saw a woman standing at the end of a corridor in a palace. Stood at the end, she saw a portrait of a blonde woman holding a baby, with the picture named 'Diana'. Five years to the day later, she claimed she had another dream about the Princess in which she saw her die in the car crash. The prophet has previously said that her predictive dreams arrive in a period of time that can be divided by five. Then in 1995, Tatsuki said that dreamed an old man led her to 'cracked earth', leading her to predict that the Japanese city of Kobe would be 'cracked' in either 15 days or 15 years. And thus her prophecy came true as 15 days later, Kobe was struck by an insidious earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people. It is now considered the second deadliest earthquake of the 20th century. Elsewhere in her book, she also predicted there would be a 'great disaster' that would occur in 2011. It has also been alleged that Tatsuki accurately predicted the onset of the Covid pandemic. Writing in her book, she predicted: 'In 25 years, an unknown virus will come in 2020, will disappear after peaking in April, and appear again 10 years later.' If Tatsuki is correct, the world is yet to see the end of the virus, with another surge in cases poised for five years time. Since a number of her predictions turned out to be true, Tatsuki has been compared to the Bulgarian prophetess, Baba Vanga. Baba Vanga, who died aged 85 in 1996, was a blind psychic who passed away three decades ago. She became a cult figure after supposedly predicting major world events such as 9/11, the Covid-19 pandemic and even Princess Diana's death.
Telegraph
07-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
AI to predict future illnesses using NHS patient data
Artificial intelligence will be used to predict future illnesses by analysing all NHS patients' data in a world-first study. The pilot will see a generative AI model, called Foresight, trained to predict disease by using the anonymised health data of 57 million people in England. The model will learn about the patterns that have led to ill-health and hospitalisation among people in England with the aim of being able to spot trends and predict people at risk of health issues such as heart attacks. It will work in a similar way to other AI models such as ChatGPT, which predicts the next word in a sentence based on the data it has accumulated from across the internet. By better understanding the predictors of disease, heart attacks and the causes of hospitalisations, it will be easier to intervene in an individual's life and take measures to prevent such an event from happening. The research is being led by experts from University College London (UCL) and King's College London (King's) and has the power to 'save lives', they said. Dr Chris Tomlinson, lead researcher from UCL, said the AI model could play a key role in the Government's mission to shift to preventing illness rather than just treating it. Predicting diseases before they happen 'AI models are only as good as the data on which they're trained. So if we want a model that can benefit all patients, with all conditions, then the AI needs to have seen that during training,' he said. 'Foresight is a really exciting step towards being able to predict disease and complications before they happen, giving us a window to intervene and enabling a shift towards more preventative health care at scale,' he added. It could predict the risk of someone being hospitalised and 'use Foresight to understand the drivers for that deterioration, and potentially suggest personalising opportunities for intervention so that might include, for example, optimising medications to improve blood pressure control and reduce the risk of, say, stroke', Dr Tomlinson said. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said the Government was ' harnessing trailblazing AI to radically transform our NHS – while also protecting patient data with strict security procedures'. 'I'm determined that we use this kind of groundbreaking technology to cut down on unnecessary hospital trips, speed up diagnosis times, and free up staff time,' he added. 'AI will be central as we bring our analogue NHS into the digital age to deliver faster and smarter care across the country.' Use of NHS data Foresight is being trained using NHS data, including hospital and A&E admissions and vaccination rates. It has previously had access to a limited number of datasets for Covid-19 research from between November 2018 to the end of 2023, but is now being rolled out at 'unprecedented scale'. It comes after an investigation found last month that Chinese researchers were to be granted access to half a million GP records through UK Biobank, a research hub, despite MI5 fears that Beijing's regime could acquire sensitive information. However, those involved in the Foresight study are adamant the research follows strict security protocols with personal information stripped away. They said it was operating within the NHS England Secure Data Environment, which is a research analysis platform where the 'de-identified' data from 57 million people exists. Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, said 'an unrelenting focus on privacy and security means people can rest assured that their data is in safe hands'. The new pilot comes after a study, published in the Lancet Digital Health in March 2024, found Foresight was able to predict the type of health conditions a patient is likely to develop in the future. Professor Richard Dobson, deputy director of the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and another lead researcher at KCL and UCL, said: 'This pilot is building on previous research that demonstrated Foresight's ability to predict health trajectories from data from two NHS trusts. 'To be able to use it in a national setting is very exciting as it will potentially demonstrate more powerful predictions that can inform services nationally and locally.'
