Here's Why Your Well-Researched NCAA Bracket Won't Win
Think your college hoops knowledge will give you an advantage over your non-sports savvy friends this March Madness? Dream on, sports fans!
A study released by mental health researchers in Tel Aviv showed that it doesn’t matter how much knowledge or expertise you have about a sport —when it comes to predicting the outcome, it’s all about luck. Sorry, Mr. President.
The experiment tested how well participants did when foretelling the results for the UEFA Champions League, including winners and final scores. Participants included 53 pathological sports gamblers, who correctly answered 80-100% of soccer questions when surveyed, 34 soccer fans, who correctly answered 60-80% of questions, and 78 folks who don’t gamble, and who only answered 60% or less of the questions correctly. According to the results, there was no significant difference between the correct predictions of members of any of the groups. Gender didn’t make a difference either, in case you were wondering.
In fact, the two top scorers — who predicted 10 out of 16 winners correctly — were women from that last group, the non-gamblers with little to no knowledge of the sport.
This only goes to show that sports gamblers, just like any other kind of gamblers, suffer from the illusion of control. Although sports statistics are widely available, there are always odds of something totally unexpected happening. The science of bracketology is an especially fickle one, with unforeseen upsets taking people by surprise every season.
That doesn’t mean that people with less knowledge are more likely to win, either; just that we’re all on a pretty even playing field. Besides, part of the fun of gambling is the thrill of not knowing whether you’ll win or not, right?
Let’s all just lean back, crack open a beer, enjoy the games and continue that age-old American tradition of being annoying sports fans — it’s one thing you can definitely count on happening this basketball season.
[Pic via Wikimedia Commons - Pete Souza]
