But why is he going to the Steinbergs in Samvet? The Steinbergs have only daughters, two of them, so maybe he’s their son-in-law. But if he is, then which daughter did he marry? They say that Sarah Steinberg married a nice lawyer from Budapest, and Esther married a businessman from Zhitomer, so it must be Sarah’s husband. Which means that his name is Alexander Cohen, if I’m not mistaken.
But if he came from Budapest, with all the anti-Semitism they have there, he must have changed his name.
What’s the Hungarian equivalent of Cohen? It is Kovacs. But since they allowed him to change his name, he must have special status to change it. What could it be? Must be a doctorate from the University. Nothing less would do.
At this point, therefore, the Talmudic scholar turns to the young man and says, “Excuse me. Do you mind if I open the window, Dr. Kovacs?”
“Not at all,” answered the startled co-passenger. “But how is it that you know my name?”
“Ahhh,” replied the Talmudist, “It was obvious.”
Woman with Long Hair Taking the initial Wikipedia example. Someone had a conversation on the train who we now know had long hair. Now let’s say this person is an Orthodox Jewish male, so now there are two options. Either he is related to this long-haired woman, or he’s engaging some spiritually-minded male soul in a discussion about Judaism. But we know this man’s family is in another city and he is travelling for business needs, so the latter option is more likely, especially as he is Chabad.1 But then we can start wondering about why this long-haired man is travelling on the same train, a train going to a very unique destination. By the end of it, given a few key “Priors,” the astute will not only be able to figure out the gender of this person, but some personal details as well.
Andrew Mason’s New Company Now just for fun, let’s put our version of predictive analysis to the test, but this time for an event that has not yet happened. The intent is not that we are trying to predict the outcome (something which can easily enter murky waters according to the Torah) but to deduce based on present facts, the most probable outcome.
A few days ago, former CEO of Groupon, Andrew Mason, was in the news again. This time it was because he sold more than half of his Groupon stock. As a predictive journalist we’d like to write about what Andrew plans to do next as a result of this sale. But in order to predict, we need to go back in time.
In a May 2013 blogpost, Andrew begins with the following: “I feel very lucky to be alive at a time when someone like me can have a simple idea like Groupon that ends up impacting millions of people. If there’s a silver lining to leaving Groupon, it’s the opportunity to start something new. I’ve accumulated a backlog of ideas over the last several years, my favorite of which I’ll be turning into a new company this fall.”
It is now nearing the spring of 2014, and aside from a motivational business song album entitled “Hardly Workin,” seemingly, we are still waiting for that business announcement.
As explained in “Groupon: TurningDailyDealsintoTippingPoints,” Groupon was a commercialized version of Andrew’s prior non-profit venture, ThePoint.com.