Michael Giberson
An update on my “Markets vs. Wisdom of Crowds” NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament brackets. See the earlier discussion here. The Market bracket (based on Ticket Reserve fan forward prices) beat the Wisdom bracket (based on ESPN’s “national bracket” aggregation of 3 million plus entries submitted), with final scores in the ESPN tournament challenge of 660 to 580 (at the 80th percentile and 56th percentile, respectively).
On the other hand, my personal entry came back from its early-round failures to attain a respectable 810 points (at the 97th percentile), only about 82,600 spots out of the money. My bounce back resulted solely from guessing correctly that UCLA would prevail over Gonzaga and Memphis, and eventually reach the championship game. Lest you think me smart or wise about such things, Memphis and UCLA were the only 2 teams I correctly picked for the Elite Eight round.
So there you have it: it is better to be lucky than smart. Remember, you saw it here first.
“[I]t is better to be lucky than smart.”
Is the rest of the lesson:
Better to be smart than popular?