You, Venezuela and the wisdom of crowds

A lot has been written about the real power of the Wisdom of the Crowds. I wil try to see if we can work together to find out if it helps in this case.

Last month I started up a little poll asking readers to guess when Chávez would cease to be the head of state of Venezuela. Every month from now on I will keep having the poll and after the second month I will transform all results into a line chart and I will add a pie chart with that month's figures.

Here we have the first results (no line chart yet). It will start to become interesting from this month onwards. Please, feel free to find vote every month. It only takes a couple of seconds. There were 47 answers. 10 persons thought Chávez will be out before the end of 2011, 11 thought it would be between 2012 and 2013, 14 between 2014 and 2020, 4 thought later and 8 do not know.


I also add here another chart to show you the gender distribution for our readers. I started that poll much later, so there are fewer respondents. Still, I think the proportion would not change much in the next months: there are less females than males reading the blog, 3 for every 4. That reflects the usual Internet usage differences, but I do expect and hope the differences to dicrease on the middle to long term.

May you all have the best possible 2010!

A new year just started. It will be the year of the "metal tiger" in February which apparently has all sorts of implications. The last time there was a "metal tiger " year, I read it was 1950 and that year Delgado Chalbaud was assassinated, Perez Jimenez started his rise to absolute power. We are thus promised plenty of drama this year. Another horoscope says that there will be surprises in the legislative election. Imagine that.....

But the fact of the matter is that the year starts with a massive handicap for Chavez. The economy contracted by 2.9% this year per the numbers of the Central Bank (probably somewhat minimized). Reserves are lower than one year ago. No one can see how oil production can increase significantly since PDVSA has no money to invest. And oil prices increase threaten to be insufficient to compensate for the revenue Chavez needs for his personal worldly ambitions. And of course no one will invest his or her hard earned money knowing full well that nationalization of anything of value lays at the end of the road.

No horoscope is needed to guess that 2010 rhymes with trouble.

Thus you are warned: if you live in Venezuela you can make yours that Chinese greeting (I think it is Chinese) "May you live through interesting times". And if you do not live in Venezuela you may have an easier time than us as long as you can retain your job. Thus my advice for today: stay put and forget about the world for 24 hours. Hopefully some of you will have a hangover to help :)

At any rate may you all receive my best wishes for 2010, along my earnest gratitude for your concern when I was sick. If odds are reasonable after three significant health problems this year I should be good to go for next year, ready to deal with whatever is sent our way. Because a blog is more about its readers than about the authors.