http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,58353,00.html A CS professor at the University of Washington has done some data mining on airline ticket prices and come up with some algorithms for predicting fluctuations in airline fares. A San Francisco travel agent quoted in the article to show industry skepticism makes the worst possible analogy: "Trying to predict the price of airline tickets is like trying to predict the weather in San Francisco -- you never know what it will be. It depends on so many factors," said Nancy Cathcart, travel agent with Buenaventura Travel, based in San Francisco. Excuse me? As a former longtime SF Bay Area resident, their weather is the easiest to predict in the country! You look at Pacific weather satellite images. If you see a storm coming, it's going to rain. If you don't, it'll be clear. There's some variation in how much it'll rain or whether a storm will pass to the north or the south, but SF weather is easy compared to East Coast or Midwest weather. Put another way, if the professor's program can predict fare fluctuations as well as a SF resident can predict the weather, I'd be very interested in it. :-) Just a thought, Nick