Today I've edited a
Rosetta Code task about forest fire, and by doing so I've learnt about the
Forest fire model.
How is this related with bitcoin? Well, later in the day I was browsing the press coverage section on the bitcoin forum, and I thought how silly journalists were, to copy one an other in such a ridiculous way. It seems clear to me that they are, consciously or not, in major part responsible for the current bull market in bitcoin.
As I was trying to find an analogy, the forest fire naturally came to my mind.
Here are the rules of a forest fire model:
* A burning cell turns into an empty cell
* A tree will burn if at least one neighbor is burning
* A tree ignites with probability f even if no neighbor is burning
* An empty space fills with a tree with probability p
It's easy to relate to journalism, isn't it?
A newspaper will certainly not make its headline about the same subject several times in a row. That's rule 1.
When Bloomberg makes its headling about bitcoin, the Financial Times somehow thinks it just has to do the same. That's rule 2.
Rule 3 and 4 are similar, but introduce parameters which are largely unknown for journalism, but we might infer them with historical data, I guess.
If we add to this model other parameters, such as a to-be-determined relation between the price and media coverage, I suspect it must be possible to predict the end of the current rally.
Anyone would like to give it a try?
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