Numbers

Magic 8-Ball

The "Magic 8-Ball" is a toy that when a user asks a yes-or-no questions and then turns it face up, the ball gives "advice" or "predicts the future" by giving an "answer."  The answers come from a 20-sided die floating inside the ball and appear in a small window.

How It's Used

Elizabeth Shelburne: Do you think we're going to stay and clean it [Iraq] up?

P.J. O'Rourke:  That's a magic eight ball question. Answer: cloudy. Ask again later.

“Mr. Etzioni, the brains behind such early Internet companies as MetaCrawler, a search engine, and Netbot, an online comparison shopping service, decided this was a situation computers could address. All he would need is a mountain of data to mine for information about seat supply and demand and an algorithm to predict how the airlines' algorithms were going to price those seats.

“A brief student project proved that, indeed, computers could be far more reliable than a Magic 8-Ball. So Mr. Etzioni helped to create Farecast, an airfare search engine that also predicts how much the price of an airline ticket will rise or fall over the coming days (www.farecast.com).”

"Given the recent media coverage surrounding fraud and Ponzi schemes, it is scary to trust finance companies. Unfortunately, I don’t have a magic eight ball to tell you which companies will end up like that. What I can tell you is that if your employer offers a 401(k), you are probably safe investing in it and that if an investment offers you returns that seem unreal, they probably are."

Also Known As (AKA)

Magic Eight Ball

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