How the Math That Powers Google Foresaw the New Pope
SMRTR summary
When Pope Francis died and 133 cardinals gathered to elect his successor, traditional prediction methods including AI models and betting markets completely missed the eventual winner, Cardinal Robert Prevost (now Pope Leo XIV). Researchers at Bocconi University successfully identified Prevost as a top candidate using eigenvector centrality, the same mathematical technique behind Google's search algorithm, which measures influence by analyzing how well-connected someone's connections are within social networks.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Scientific American.
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