The making of a simple yet complex price predictor

Rail tickets become increasingly expensive the closer you get to the date of the departure, and so the data team built a price predictor that learnt those patterns and predicts when they believe a particular price would expire. “As of June 2018, we’ve saved people who use our feature about £9 million,” he said.

It sounds simple, but Weldon explained that it is far more complicated. “What looks like a really simple feature is actually a complex system and it has taken about two years to get to the point at which we could release it at scale,” said Weldon.

During those two years Weldon has learnt some tough lessons. The first is to take the rough with the smooth. “I find it very, very exciting to be working in data and I feel very privileged to be here at this point in time. But it is hard and you need to be willing to accept that,” he said.

While he stated that if you took the model and boiled it down, you would end up with a “small serialised object,” he also likened the difficulty of creating of the price prediction model to building the pyramids of Giza.