Microsoft Nails All But 4 of 24 Oscar Predictions And the statue for best data-driven Academy Award predictions goes to...Bing.

By Kim Lachance Shandrow

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Always trust the data.

No one saw Neil Patrick Harris's jaw-dropping tighty whities strip-down coming or John Travolta's awkward face fondling, but Microsoft did accurately forecast nearly all of last night's top Oscar wins.

The Redmond, Wash.-based corporate computing giant gazed into its Bing predictive analytics ball once again and rocked its Academy Award predictions, correctly pegging the winners of best actress, best actor, best director, best picture and more.

Related: 6 Music Stars Betting Big on Tech

In case you missed it, that means Microsoft accurately predicted the following Oscar wins, as noted on its research blog:

  • Best Film: Birdman
  • Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman)
  • Best Actress: Julianne Moore (Still Alice)
  • Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything)
  • Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette (Boyhood)
  • Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons (Whiplash)

In all, Microsoft, relying on an apparently awesome prediction model managed by research guru David Rothschild, nailed 20 out of 24 predictions. Last year, the bow-tied economist and pollster at Microsoft's New York City research lab correctly foresaw 21 of 24 Oscar winners and 19 of 24 the year before that. Someone deserves an award. Maybe just the Lego kind.

Related: 4 Movies Every Entrepreneur Should Watch

Related: From Oprah to the Kardashians: 6 Celebrity-Inspired Business Lessons
Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebook here. 

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