Tom, Thank you so much. What another wonderful wonderful few weeks you have given us. I have learned, well, actually, relearned, a terribly important lesson. All models are wrong. And, while some models are useful, not all are. I managed to build one of the useless ones this year. Every approach I am thinking about how to do better keeps leading me to having to learn some subject matter content. Argh. I don’t understand the game, don’t watch, and don’t enjoy watching. Also, don’t play it. I think I maybe have taken the pure numerological aspect of this work about as far as it can go. Thank you for taking me the edge. Next year I’ll need to read your musings more seriously. Congratulations to the real, and the pool, winners. Thanks too to your family for letting you give all of us so much of your time.

Thanks for a great first march madness picking experience everyone!!! I want to let everyone know that if you want to win the upset pool next year it helps to do the following: 1. Pick winners by mascots. 2. Actually pick upsets!!!! – The people who finished right below me had teams like Ohio State and Kansas and Connecticut in the final games. I had Temple and Louisville – I like birds!!! I’ll leave you with my mom’s favorite math quote: ‘If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them’

continued… Ferget it–where’s my oiji-board? (Tom, next year give me a character counter so I know when I’ve run off the end in my self-pity)

A fascinating tournament. OK, my picks are totally blown. But beyond that. I have built a Bradley-Terry class model that gives the probability of each team beating every other that fits the regular season as well as possible. Given this belief structure (a set of 604 parameters) I can simulate hundreds of thousands of tournaments. This tournament (or one even more extreme) has like a 1 in 500 probability. (There are different ways to measure weirdness, but they are all similar). I’ve been doing this modeling for like 10 years now. So, a multiple comparison correction gets me to like 1 in 50 decadal probability. Makes me think teams either do, or are starting to, play differently in the tournament than in the regular season. You basketball hotshots out there–do underdogs play a higher variance game–like more 3-point attempts or such in this single elimination structure? Shees, am I going to actually have to learn something about basketball to build a sensible model? Fe

Loved Piet’s comment on FB VCU Rams won the game doo dah, doo dah. Jayhawk fans go home in shame, Oh the doo dah day.

Sorry UConn. But when the VCU Rams beat the Butler Bulldogs to make it to the finals, the need to face (and beat) Kentucky. The Southeast Conference (SEC) is the only Major conference they have yet to face in the tournament. With wins over USC (Pac10), Georgetown (Big East), Purdue (Big 10), Florida State (ACC), and Kansas (Big 12), the SEC is the only conference of the major 6 conferences that VCU has yet to face. Guess the big question—-Can VCU beat another mid-Major? Hell yeah!!!!

So epic…the Belvedere exit is closed by State Police. I guess I should have taken VCU to the Final Four instead of Purdue. But between those two for Undergraduate and Graduate schools…who would have thunk.

Hey Tom? I’m pretty sure I swapped my entry to your contest with my loser pool entry. That’s the only possible explanation at how poorly I’m doing this time 🙂

I see that Logan Horgan at age 2 knows that the correct age is 2.5. Hmm, in this pool the contestants children, at age 2, already know decimals. Shees, what will Logan know by age 3? Like pi or transcendental numbers? Competitive group here, and everyone playing coy–aw-shucks aren’t I just the silliest thing? Now who am I thinking I can make economically optimizing decisions under non-stationary uncertainty in a zero-sum multi-player multi-entry game? A joy to be matching up with world-class competitors like Logan. May the best prognosticator triumph. Who needs those silly decimals anyhow–back to Roman numerals for me, aged LVII and I/II. 🙂 Bill

Yeah, the only reason my husband is beating me this year is becuase he mislead me on what upsets to pick. 😛 Learned the lesson, will get him next year 🙂 GO VCU!!!!!!