After reading o-glad’s bracket post, I decided I would sit down and give his bracket the proverbial what for . . . but then my nerdiness took over.
What would it take to create the perfect bracket? What strategy could I employ to baffle the armchair-jocks that are using their vast and equally useless knowledge to come up with a bracket they deem will reign supreme? After careful studying, researching, and google searching, I have come up with three tactics:
“The Brute Force Method” – This strategy involves the creation of all possible MM brackets. After the brackets are made you enter each one under a different name into whichever contest you desire. Algorithmic problem solving FTW!!! I know some of you are trying to do the math in your heads. Good luck with that. A single elimination tournament with 32 initial matches such as MM has roughly 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible unique outcomes. That number gives Avogadro a run for his money. There are a few problems with this strategy, however. According to the cheapest google product search result for a ream of paper, you would be spending 58 quintillion dollars (not including ink) just to print out the brackets. Then you’d still have to come up with all those pseudonyms to submit your brackets under.
“The Abstraction of Biases Method” – Those with incurable fetishes for losing teams might try what TheSister’s female students do. Pick a different criterion to base your critical contest choices on. Try team color, total combined weight of the starters, the amount melanin present in the team, or even a coin toss. It may sound crazy and ultimately counterproductive, but empirical evidence seems to indicate that this method produces more near-perfect brackets than any other. So this isn’t a “perfect bracket every time” strategy, but oddly enough it seems to increase your odds of winning none the less.
“The Divine Intervention Method” – This one would require you to, beginning today, start praying that somehow the winning bracket for MM ‘09 will come to you in a dream, be delivered to you by an angel, or appear to you in your breakfast cereal. However, unlikely as it sounds, it is probably your best chance to win, especially if you consider the astronomical odds you have against you.
In conclusion . . . they don’t call it March Madness for nothing.
Filed under: Entertainment, Hodge Podge, Life in General
I think that Avagadro still wins – he can fit approx 65300 of that number into his!
The method that I used for my bracket was a mixture of the above.
First, I advanced all number 1 seeds three rounds, then all number 2 seeds 2 rounds, then all 3 and 4 seeds 1 round.
This actually worked quite well except in Georgetown and Duke’s cases. But I was happy about Duke.
Second, I then allowed my biases to play a part. So, I put UNC all the way baby! Because they’re PTPers, BABY!
Third, I pick some random upsets. This was by far the worst part of my method.
But the Divine Intervention Method would probably be the most reliable, if you could read between the lines of your cereal.