Aspiring Hari Seldon - Part 3 - Releasing REST Forecasts

Check out part 2

After playing with Prophet, I wanted a way to distribute the data more publicly.  I could have just incorporated it into our R templates and made it part of the show, but I felt like that was unfair to the general public.

(Though it required a ground-up rework) I used the Flask Restful app we were providing for EVE Mogul.  Though this turned out to be a complete rewrite, I learned a lot about Flask and testing to make things go.

What They Don't Tell You

One of the biggest pains of self-teaching is it's very easy to learn enough to be useful, but not enough to be good.  And the Flask documentation is particularly bad about giving up the barebones of what does what, but totally forgets to sell a viable project shape, leading to a lot of pain later.

Since the original OHLC feed was based loosely off a work project (as a way to test out corners on my own time), it repeated a design flaw.  Turns out there's a very particular Flask shape, and deviating from it causes a lot of problems.  

Some examples to avoid pitfalls:

• Flask Cookiecutter
• ueki Flask-Restful project

By using the prescribed Flask structure, all the pieces from launcher to test make a lot more sense.  Particularly, testing was one of the more difficult pieces of the picture.

About The Endpoint

Because of the CPU-intensive operation of running predictions, I wanted to incorporate two features:

• API keying
• Caching

Though I'm happy to share the source, and open up to the community, I'm not ready for full-hog release.  TL;DR: There are a couple of Flask eccentricities, and gdoc integration could cause some serious issues.  Also, uncached performance can run north of 15s, which could cause issues for some platforms.

To help get around "walled garden" accusations, I've done a few things:

1. I've left copious notes and automation on how to deploy the service on your own webhost
2. I've provided API keys to some other market devs such as EVE Mogul and Adam4EVE
3. I am happy to distribute keys on-request to other devs

The goal is to get the content out to the widest audience possible, even if the raw data is a little unwieldy.  And due to my limitations as a developer, this is my compromise.  

Predictions In The Wild

Adam4EVE

Though my API service is designed to give you soup-to-nuts everything you need to plot in the REST payload, Ethan02 over at Adam4EVE added his own DB to keep us honest.  I totally love this!  As of right now, it's still in their DEV branch, but expect to see more from them soon!

EVE-Mogul

Extending the existing OHLC candlestick plot, EVE Mogul will let you keep close tabs on what you're currently trading, and this is an excellent chance to gut-check your investments.

Conclusions

Check out the source: ProsperAPI

Read the docs

I didn't get to share all the other super-nerdy #devfleet stuff (like travis-ci integration, or PyPI release).  I will probably try to release more notes on python stuff directly on Medium going forward.

This was an eye opening project in a lot of ways.  This opens the door for more micro-service REST stuff in the future.  Also, I do plan to have the PLEX split covered before CCP releases it on May 9th.

My Space-Retirement

I hate reading this kind of blog, and I hate writing them even more.  One day I should show off how many drafts of this I have stuck in limbo.  My IRL trajectory has steadily diverged from EVE, and it's time to accept that and make plans known.

We'll save the how/why for a little later, but I want to address fans of the show first.  The Prosper show has been the thread keeping me tied into EVE, and our community around Prosper has continued to surprise me with their knowledge and enthusiasm.  The community we've been able to generate around this niche-of-a-niche has been extraordinary and I am constantly floored by all the players in the space-economic sphere.  This whole project has exceeded every expectation, and I have to thank every single audience member and technical contributor that's got us here.  None of this would be possible without a whole lot of help from wide range of people.

Before you unsubscribe and leave everything in the dust, do know that I still hope to keep active in the blogging/streaming spheres.  Though we are closing this chapter in EVE, we are looking upward to new topics that I think many will enjoy.  Though I can't commit to details yet, know that I'd very much like to turn this brand of analysis onto something more real, and help teach more in the vein of the #devfleet.

Expect the final EVE Prosper show to air in June.  I'd very much like to hit #100 before we close this chapter, but I don't want this to be the end of our little community.  I am still enthusiastic about the same things that started Prosper (economics, programming, datascience) and still want to bring a down-to-earth style to topics that might look insurmountably complex.  But I cannot continue to be that resource for EVE.

Thank you everyone that has made this show possible.  Thank you to Caleb/Rhivre at the SCC-Lounge, Jeronica at EVE-Mogul, and thank you to Dirk MacGirk and Materall at INN, for helping weave a community both in and out of game with us.  Thank you to the Capstable crew and the likes of NoisyGamer for helping us grow this srsbzns niche.  And thank you immensely to Randomboy/Kane, Chris Mellen, and Etienne Erquiline for all the behind-the-scenes technical work to build EVE Prosper into what it has become... and I am sure I'm still missing a cavalcade of others who have helped us stand and grow.


No one truly quits EVE, and I can't for certain say this is the absolute end... but after 12 years of play, and 5 years of content making, it's time to look to a new chapter.  Please, do join us as we bring this show to a close, and thank you to everyone who has made this possible.  There are a few remaining projects in the runway, so be sure to watch to the very end.

o7

Aspiring Hari Seldon - Part 2

Been quite a while, but I have a follow up to this old post.

A Crash Course

Tinkering with prices is difficult, and most players may not understand why.  Though we all interact with the price of things, unspinning the mess of how and why becomes complicated fast.  

What's worse, the price of a thing doesn't follow traditional fitting tools, it's a collection of ups-and-downs day-to-day.  It's a solution to a complicated network of factors.  This is why I've had so much trouble designing forecasts; because starting point is critical, and the walking methods aren't strictly obvious.

After dancing around this problem for as long as I have, I've come up with a few best-practices for approaching Prosper's economic reporting:

1. Make it normal or linear: hard math is hard, keep analysis as simple as possible
2. Figure out connections: storytelling can quickly connect seemingly disparate points
3. Assume players aren't dumb: everyone is trying to win
4. Look for disproof: try to eliminate weaknesses and errors in tools

Prophet - A New Crack At Forecasting

My boss sent me a link to Prophet.  And, of course, I threw EVE data at it!

On the one hand, that PLEX prediction is pretty hilarious, while on the other, the injector forecast is very close to one I'd publish on the show.

So, what is going on here?  I still think we're running into the issue of putting linear-style modeling on a non-linear problem, but we're getting much closer to the gut-version I would like to illustrate on the show.  

What's more, we can use a previous lesson and use the forecaster to predict the day-to-day volatility as a second opinion.  Using a GBM-style method, we get this:

Getting a second opinion in this case is a good way to counteract the problem of runaway models; forecasts that get stuck in a runaway up or down swing.  Though it's not fool-proof, we're reaching a "good enough" level to actually start considering it in our tooling.

Let's Go!

Get the code here

As promising as these initial findings are, I still worry they aren't a good replacement for more robust methods.  I'm still investigating the following:

1. Single-dimension: only using price data, not including volume for supply/demand accounting
2. Limited test scope: only run on CREST history data, not extended history data yet
3. Time series rigidity: designed for daily data
4. No extended grading done: need to test predictions vs reality

But the future is promising.  There are some key features I'm loving in this library:

• Built-in changepoint trending: predicting discontinuities is very powerful
• Python/R library parity: easy development/testing
• Built-in week/month/season accounting
• EXTREMELY FAST

There's so much more to play with, and I'm excited to dive deeper.  I'm looking into including these forecasts sparingly into the Prosper show going forward, as a better way to illustrate my gut feelings.  And hopefully we can incorporate these forecasts in a more robust feature in the near future!

TypeNames redacted while debugging

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Casino Bans and F2P - October Economic Report

October was jam packed with news. Engineering Complexes, NPE Update, Command Boosts, and EULA changes. The stage is set for Ascension, but where is the economy today?

The Money Supply - IWI Bans

Though EVEbet was allowed to close peacefully and settle tabs, I Want ISK (IWI) was shuttered with a ban wave that knocked out the leaders while zeroing out all bankers' wallets. I personally feel that this kind of enforcement was one of the better scenarios given the circumstances; freeing IWI from paying back over-leveraged liabilities because #grrccp. But many complain that without the premier content sponsors, producers and content makers will be in trouble. Though it’s important to remember the EULA update is in line with a changing litigious atmosphere around virtual gambling, see: Valve mired in CS:GO trouble.

Money Supply Graph - Total ISK zoomed in

Market watchers wanted to know the quantifiable impacts. Reddit reports put the damage at 30T, but looking between the Money Supply data and monthly Sinks & Faucet Report, we're estimate the total cash impact at 22.4T out of a record 36T reported in the Active ISK Delta for October. Damages could total to 30T when counting confiscated PLEX or high-value assets like Alliance Tournament prizes, but that value is not reported in the Economic Report and we have no way of corroborating any claim over 27T.

Lastly, CCP Quant released a breakdown of EVE's player wealth distribution. Though many took to social media to argue about the 1%, the distribution of ISK is much fairer than anticipated. It's a good bet to assume a power curve in cases like this: where 20% of the population controls 80% of the resources. And though this does not include net worth/physical assets, nor corporation wallets or alliance war-chests, it's an interesting sample of wealth in EVE.

Other Indicators

Looking at other monthly indicators we find a mixed bag. First off, PLEX and ISK velocity remain on their seasonal track without much deviation. PLEX has risen a little too sharply in the last week, and shows some signs of leveling off for a price between 1.25B and 1.3B for Ascension.

Usually, the markets are hottest in the fall, with gaming rising across the board in Q4.  Last year, the markets were hottest in October with each player gathering like EVE_NT, EVEsterdam, and EVE Vegas stoking the hype train. This year, players seem to be in a holding pattern ahead of Ascension. Though CCP Rise's Alpha Clone PVP presentations should have stoked more hype into pre-Ascension speculation, statistics still look anemic. Furthermore, the PVP numbers are concerning. The pre-Vegas dip was so unbelievable, we had to verify we were not missing data.

Looking Forward to Ascension

Hitting the big points as fast as possible:

• PLEX: Expect demand to be a wash, watch out for PLEX sales to pop the current bubble
• Mining: Brace for big impacts across the board:
• Tritanium: Stay stable in short term due to ISK/m3 value, but expect long term sag
• Pyerite/Isogen: Bigger drops as compressed material comes out of nullsec
• Mexallon/Nocxium: Expecting supply stability, though volatile prices
• Zydrine/Megacyte: Still have room to fall, and will be clobbered by Ascension mining
• Morphite: Minimum supply change, but weak demand without big conflicts
• Nitrogen Isotopes: EC's should offline many industry POS, lowering demand
• Other Isotopes: Hot on patch day, but supplies should drive prices down by end of year
• Alphas: Minimal impacts in T1 prices, but should drive up ISK velocity and PVP stats

Forecasting Alpha impacts is incredibly difficult given no other game comes close to EVE mechanically. Many savvy players already treat EVE as F2P thanks to PLEX. Also, since Skill Injectors were introduced, subsidizing ISK generation has never been easier. The content of EVE is players, and Alphas give the means to keep more warm bodies in the game. We are excited to see Nov-Jan's economic stats with the expected flood of new content generators.

Favorite Python Packages 01 - Making a chatbot

I had to write a logging handler for work that pushed errors up to HipChat. Turns out the process was so easy, I could not resist adding a chat-handler to ProsperCommon (esp given my hacky email handler). Despite my love for Slack, Discord became the tool-of-choice because it’s easy to stand-up/tear-down chats with a lot of flexibility. I also skipped Slack for now because the tweetfleet server blows past the 10k message buffer on a daily basis.

So, let's cook up a chatbot! Discord's API offerings are dizzying; this should be easy!

Discord.py - Making Chatbots Easy

Since Discord relies on an oAuth2 connection, and chats are inherently asynchronous, cooking up a bot from scratch would hurt. Discord.py to the rescue! This library has exceptional API coverage and is easy to use.

My one gripe is the documentation. Docs are sparse in places, but I'll forgive that sin with their example code and an active community on the Discord API Guild. Also, I had some trouble getting off the ground with the Discord API docs. Specifically, getting the correct tokens required to work, but once the bot was authenticated, it was off to the races!

TinyDB - The Easy Object-store

Pinging the internet for data is not free; whether because of rate limits or round trip times. Tools like SQLite are great for lightweight/portable data storage, but also requires schema design. MongoDB is a powerful noSQL solution, but is heavy to stand up (and I'm not in love with the query language). TinyDB comes to the rescue as a way to get the JSON/noSQL storage of MongoDB with none of the server/auth standup.

This shines when paired with REST endpoints. It's easy to push/pop entries around and keep the same raw JSON in archive as what's coming from the endpoint. Also, it's as easy as JSON to add more keys for searching. I'm still not in love with my cache-timer implementation in ProsperBot, but fetching from cache is 100x faster than an internet-call. Lastly, debug is easy since output is raw JSON, though this could lead to compression issues down the line.

Quick pro-tip about TinyDB: get ujson. This pure-C implementation of the JSON library is a great drop-in replacement. It can also be baked into libraries like Requests. ujson makes handling JSON lightning fast! Also, TinyDB has a wide array of extensions, and I will be looking into MongoDB hooks at a future date.

NLTK - Processing Text Made Easy

The number one problem I have with stock quotes: it takes 2-3 extra clicks to figure out WHY the price moved for the day. Google/Yahoo/etc provide great single-stock pages that give news summaries, but when you open a ticker or phone widget, only the raw numbers are reported. If I'm going to make a quote bot, why not include some information and save people a search?

The good news, Google/Yahoo both give a by-ticker API of relevant news articles. The bad news, they yield 10-15 articles in the query. Furthermore, the data isn't particularly ranked/scored from the source. I could have gambled with first-article being the best, or stacked a publisher priority order, but all I wanted was:

Good news when the stock is up.  Bad news when the stock is down

NLTK to the rescue. I have wanted to try my hand at sentiment/language analysis since I saw a local talk on Analyzing P2P Lending Data. Putting headlines through the vader_lexicon tools did exactly what I wanted and was blazing fast.

After playing with this quick demo of NLTK, I'm excited to expand this toolset.  If I can find the time, I'd very much like to write up a new discord bot for grading a community and highlighting troublemakers statistically rather than bluntly using block lists and word black-lists.

Let's See It!

ProsperBot Source

ProsperBot Docs

I'm going to save the "how to get [stock] data" question for another blog.  There's a wide world of API's and support out there, and digging into them is worth a whole blog.  For the impatient, I used these two articles as a springboard to get started:

• An Introduction to Stock Market Data Analysis with Python (Part 1)
• An Introduction to Stock Market Data Analysis with Python (Part 2)

Though designing the bot language may require some creative design for EVE topics, standing up the bot should be easy.  I've been able to add functions at a uniquely fast pace (0.5-1d/feature) and standing up the whole bot took just a few evenings once I got through the roadblocks.  The libraries above are excellent tools to have in your tool box, and I'm excited to dig deeper into their functionality beyond the small `hello world` functions written so far!