Today we went to the University of Nicosia again for lectures on various topics. The first lecture was on the blockchain. Going into this lecture, I had little knowledge of the blockchain. I learned that the blockchain is a data set that can be constantly updated just like any other data set, but where it differs from the standard data set is that every previous version and any addition to it can be seen not only by the company who owns it but by everyone. An example of practical use of blockchain the professor gave was that with email; one can have one regardless of what the companies that own a domain say cause there are many other competitors, or one could make their domain. However, with something like Twitter, if Twitter decides that you should not be on the platform, you won’t be on the forum, and there is no way around it. The blockchain would allow Twitter to become similar to email, where one person or company does not control data distribution, and it breaks a monopoly of sorts.
The following lecture we had was on supply chain forecasting. Forecasting is the practice of predicting future demand to increase efficiency. Forecasting has a fascinating history. In 1959 the first forecasting models were made. They were simplistic but very effective in what they did. In the 70s, people started to develop more complex methods of forecasting. These methods would require semester-long classes to teach people, while the ones made in 1959 only took five minutes. There were debates about which models were more effective at forecasting. In the 80s, there was a forecasting competition, and the results were that the simple methods were far more effective at predicting future demands than the complex ones. After this competition, there was another one in the 2000s where human bias was implemented, and the results showed that the simple methods still outperformed the complex techniques and dwarfed the plans with human preferences in them.