Microsoft has a piece of technology that it keeps under the Bing brand that is quite good at using data and algorithms to predict the outcome of various types of events. The tool is called Bing Predicts and we have seen this tool used with NFL games and the World Cup too, and most recently, Microsoft unleashed the tool on the US elections.
Now that the elections are over, we can take a look at how well Bing performed in selecting winners in the US elections and the results are quite good. Overall, the prediction engine gets a score of 95% accuracy with the following results; Senate: 34 out of 35 correct; House: 419 out of 435 correct; and in Governor races, 33 out of 36 correct.
That accuracy rate is pretty impressive and shows that the Bing prediction engine is versatile in the types of events it can aggregate and in which it can correctly select the winner.
Microsoft hasn"t said what they will use the engine for next but if you want to see the engine in action, you can ask Cortana right now about who will win the next NFL game for your favorite team.
Source: Microsoft