Big Data. We hear about it a lot these days. But what does it actually mean? And what does it actually do? Well, one way we are utilising the power of ‘big data’ (which effectively just means ‘data’, but lots and lots of it) at Microsoft is through our Bing Predicts engine. It’s an initiative that uses machine-learning models to analyse and detect patterns from a range of (big) data sources such as the web and social activity in order to make...
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The Bing Prediction engine has been busy churning out predictions for users in the US in Bing and Cortana, providing projections for reality TV shows, the NBA amateur draft, and most recently, the World Cup. For the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ Scottish Referendum vote, we are Beta testing the Bing Predicts model here in the UK to leverage our algorithms against web/social data in the UK and Scotland to bring projections ahead of the historic September...
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