Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece on predicting box office hits with algorithms relates Hollywood’s efforts to determine the value of a movie when it’s still in script form. The major problem they are facing is that with so many variables it’s hard to tell which elements are helping or hindering box office returns. It seems to boil down to the fact that in the end, “nobody knows anything about anything” or do they? As Gladwell’s works usually are, this one is a tremendously good read.