Tobias Preis is Professor of
Behavioral Science
Behavioral sciences explore the cognitive processes within organisms and the behavioral interactions between organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behavior through naturalistic o ...
and
Finance at
Warwick Business School
Warwick Business School (WBS) is an academic department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Warwick University, that was established in 1967 as the School of Industrial and Business Studies.
The Business School offers undergraduate, postgradu ...
and a fellow of the
Alan Turing Institute. He is a computational social scientist focussing on measuring and predicting human behavior with online data. At
Warwick Business School
Warwick Business School (WBS) is an academic department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Warwick University, that was established in 1967 as the School of Industrial and Business Studies.
The Business School offers undergraduate, postgradu ...
he directs the Data Science Lab together with his colleague
Suzy Moat. Preis holds visiting positions at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
and
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
. In 2011, he worked as a senior research fellow with
H. Eugene Stanley
Harry Eugene Stanley (born March 28, 1941) is an American physicist and University Professor at Boston University. He has made seminal contributions to statistical physics and is one of the pioneers of interdisciplinary science. His current r ...
at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
and with
Dirk Helbing
Dirk Helbing (born January 19, 1965) is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich.
Biography
Dirk Helbing studied phy ...
at
ETH Zurich. In 2009, he was named a member of the Gutenberg Academy. In 2007, he founded Artemis Capital Asset Management GmbH, a
proprietary trading
Proprietary trading (also known as prop trading) occurs when a trader trades stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, their derivatives, or other financial instruments with the firm's own money (instead of using depositors' money) in order to m ...
firm which is based in Germany. He was awarded a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in physics from the
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 st ...
in Germany.
Preis has quantified and modelled financial market fluctuations. In addition, he has made contributions to general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (
GPGPU
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditiona ...
) in
statistical physics
Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approxim ...
and
computational finance
Computational finance is a branch of applied computer science that deals with problems of practical interest in finance.Rüdiger U. Seydel, '' tp://nozdr.ru/biblio/kolxo3/F/FN/Seydel%20R.U.%20Tools%20for%20Computational%20Finance%20(4ed.,%20Spring ...
.
In 2010, Preis headed a research team which provided evidence that search engine query data and stock market fluctuations are correlated. The team discovered a link between the number of Internet searches for company names and transaction volumes of the corresponding stocks on a weekly time scale. In a
TEDx
TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "ideas worth spreading". TED was founded by Richard Sau ...
talk, Preis highlights the opportunities offered by studies of citizens' online behaviour to gain insights into socio and economic decision making.
In 2012, Preis used
Google Trends
Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top web search query, search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time. ...
data to demonstrate together with his colleagues
Suzy Moat,
H. Eugene Stanley
Harry Eugene Stanley (born March 28, 1941) is an American physicist and University Professor at Boston University. He has made seminal contributions to statistical physics and is one of the pioneers of interdisciplinary science. His current r ...
and
Steven R. Bishop that Internet users from countries with a higher per capita gross domestic product (
GDP
Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...
) are more likely to search for information about the future than information about the past. The findings, published in the journal ''
Scientific Reports'', suggest there may be a link between online behaviour and real-world economic indicators.
Preis and colleagues examined Google search queries made by Internet users in 45 different countries in 2010 and calculated the ratio of the volume of searches for the coming year (2011) to the volume of searches for the previous year (2009), which they call the
Future Orientation Index. A comparison of the Future Orientation Index to the per capita GDP of each country revealed a strong tendency for countries in which Google users enquire more about the future to exhibit a higher GDP. Preis and colleagues conclude from this study that a relationship potentially exists between the economic success of a country and the information-seeking behaviour of its citizens online.
In 2013, Preis and his colleagues
Suzy Moat and
H. Eugene Stanley
Harry Eugene Stanley (born March 28, 1941) is an American physicist and University Professor at Boston University. He has made seminal contributions to statistical physics and is one of the pioneers of interdisciplinary science. His current r ...
introduced a method to identify online precursors for stock market moves, using trading strategies based on search volume data provided by
Google Trends
Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top web search query, search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time. ...
. Their analysis of
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
search volume for 98 terms of varying financial relevance, published in ''
Scientific Reports'', suggests that increases in search volume for financially relevant search terms tend to precede large losses in financial markets. Similarly, in a study also published in ''
Scientific Reports'' in 2013,
Suzy Moat, Preis and colleagues demonstrated a link between changes in the number of views of
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
articles relating to financial topics and subsequent large stock market moves.
In 2015, Preis and his colleague
Suzy Moat designed and delivered a massive open online course (
MOOC) on big data. The course focuses on measuring and predicting human behavior.
Preis is an academic editor of ''PLoS ONE''.
See also
*
List of Wikipedia people
Footnotes
External links
*
Website at Warwick Business School*
TEDxZurich Talk by Tobias Preis – Bubble TroubleTEDxWarwickSalon Talk by Tobias Preis – Can Google Predict the Stock Market?
{{DEFAULTSORT:Preis, Tobias
1981 births
Living people
Complex systems scientists
Scientific computing researchers
21st-century German scientists
Academics of the University of Warwick
Wikipedia researchers