With the annual Office Pool Season now open, lots of people are queueing up to offer advice on how to fill out the bracket sheets for our national foray into illegal gambling:
- Inside Higher Ed offers a bracket based on graduation rates, with a Final Four of Florida, Virginia, Michigan State, and, um, Holy Cross. Perhaps this isn’t the way to bet…
- If you’d like statistical backing for your bad picks, Ken Pomeror is breaking down the regions, predicting the West and Midwest today.
- The New York Times offers two strategies for winning contests: 1) foolishly pick the wrong team, for example, confusing George Mason with George Washington (the “Secretary Effect” strategy), and 2) submit a whole bunch of entries (the “Shotgun” strategy).
None of these are behind my ace picks for this year (though I will end up filling out at least five brackets for different contests), though I am tempted to put together a bracket sheet based on the rankings of the physics Ph.D. programs of the various schools.
If you would like to pit your picking prowess against the brilliant minds at ScienceBlogs, you can enter the ScienceBlogs group at the Yahoo tournament contest. If you’re interested, email Dave Munger (dave at wordmunger dot com), and he’ll send you the group name and password.