Patent ID: 8452638

Claim:
A system for calculating a total participation estimate for one or more attractions at a venue, the system comprising: a data store that stores data associated with members of a prospective audience for the one or more attractions; a computing device in communication with the data store, the computing device configured to: receive data directly or indirectly from members of the prospective audience, the data comprising, for each individual member of the prospective audience, attraction interest data based on actions taken by an audience member indicating interest in a particular attraction and location data based on a geographic location of the audience member; determine at least one numerical attraction interest parameter value from the attraction interest data, wherein the at least one numerical attraction interest parameter value comprises a total number of times an individual member has performed one of the actions, a fraction of recent actions of the member that are for the particular attraction, a number of recent actions the member has taken compared to recent actions taken by an average member, or a number of actions the member has taken compared to a highest number of actions taken indicating interest in the particular attraction by any member of the prospective audience; determine a distance between the geographic location of the audience member and the venue using the location data; calculate a numerical interaction term that accounts for a magnitude of the distance when it is determined that the geographic location of the audience member is within an intermediate region where distance is expected to play a role in determining an individual probability of participation in an event featuring the particular attraction at the venue; calculate an individual probability of participation for each individual member of the prospective audience, wherein the individual probability of participation is calculated by: weighting a plurality of numerical user parameter values, the plurality of numerical user parameter values comprising the at least one numerical attraction interest parameter value of the audience member and the numerical interaction term when the individual member is located in the intermediate region; summing the weighted numerical user parameter values to generate a score; and calculating the individual probability of participation from the score by inverting the logit function; and calculate a total participation estimate for at least one of the one or more attractions if the at least one of the one or more attractions were to be placed at the venue by summing the individual probabilities of participation of the prospective audience members.