Update: Apparently this post needs a disclaimer.

1. The probabilities are based on odds published by an online bookmaker. In no way, shape, or form is this an attestation nor algorithmic prediction of who the next Pope will be.
2. The house ALWAYS wins.
3. The odds are developed by the bookmaker as they see fit, this information is not released to the general public (you and I).
4. I do not claim to have any domain specific knowledge related to the Catholic Church.
5. Be skeptical of any use other than monitoring the changes in the odds over time.

After getting frustrated with having to run python over and over again (see previous post) to see the trends in the Papal odds, I’ve put together a basic shiny app that allows for real time updates and interactivity.

A live demo version is available at http://glimmer.rstudio.com/dataparadigm/pope/.

Screenshot:

To run it locally using R choose one of the following.

  library(shiny)
  runGitHub("popeShiny", "dataparadigms")

or

  library(shiny)
  runUrl('https://github.com/dataparadigms/popeShiny/archive/master.tar.gz')

Note: Install ggplot2, lubridate, and shiny before running in R.

Kudos to the folks behind RStudio for developing the Shiny package as well as kindly offering up beta testing for Shiny Server.

Full code with comments is available on github.

Updated March 5, 2013 : Added disclaimer and reference to additional R packages.