"Two weeks later 133 cardinal electors shuttered themselves inside Vatican City's Sistine Chapel to select the next pope. Outside the Vatican, prognosticators of all stripes scrambled to predict what name would be announced from the basilica balcony. Among the expert pundits, crowdsourced prediction markets, bookies, fantasy sportslike platforms and cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, almost nobody expected Robert Prevost. Where every known method of divination seemed to fail,"
"To build their crystal ball under such circumstances, Giuseppe Soda, Alessandro Iorio and Leonardo Rizzo of Bocconi University's School of Management turned to social networks. The group combed through publicly available records to map out a network that captured the personal and professional relationships among the College of Cardinals (the senior clergy members who serve as both voters and candidates for the papacy). Think of it like an ecclesiastic LinkedIn."
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday in April, prompting a papal conclave. Two weeks later, 133 cardinal electors entered the Sistine Chapel to choose a successor. Outside the Vatican, pundits, prediction markets, bookmakers, fantasy platforms and cutting-edge AI models sought to forecast the outcome. Almost nobody predicted Robert Prevost. A team at Bocconi University's School of Management mapped public records to build a social network of the College of Cardinals, including workplace ties, ordinations and friendships. Network-science techniques ranked cardinals by three measures of influence and revealed a predictive signal missed by conventional methods.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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