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.

—Elizabeth Shelburne, "Man on the Street: P. J. O'Rourke on Iraq, Michael Kelly, and taking a country's measure by just 'hanging out,'" The Atlantic, November 13, 2003.

“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).”

—Damon Darlin, “Airfares Made Easy (or Easier),” The New York Times, July 1, 2006.

"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."

—Madison Nipp, "Financial Advice for Young Graduates," The New York Times, May 25, 2009.

Also Known As (AKA)

Magic Eight Ball

Links

Related on eAlmanac
Behind the Eight Ball
Eight Ball
Eight Ball of Cocaine

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on the Magic 8-Ball
Magic 8-Ball official Web site

Product Links
Magic 8 Ball®
Retro-Classic-Magic 8 Ball