An Embarrassing Update on VisionPoint’s Bracket Challenge

With the NCAA Tournament winding down, I’d like to fill everyone in on the results of our VisionPoint bracket challenge and scientifically determine which picking style did the best.

I’d like to start with pointing out how well I did in the first round. In fact, my “number cruncher” philosophy either went really well or really poorly in the first round, as the top two scores and two of the bottom three scores were “number crunchers.”

I’ll come back to reality now and mention that once the first round was over, my bracket decided to quit on me as well. The second round didn’t show any patterns to pick styles, and the bracket scoring was evenly distributed overall.

Both “number crunchers” and “I have no idea what I’m doing” pick styles dominated in the third round, ultimately leaving emotion and competitors in the dust. I like to think of Dwight and his high score in this round as anomalies.

Going into the Final Four, only three people remain in the game to win our bracket:

Carissa wins if: Wisconsin wins it all or loses to UConn in the final.
Clara wins if: Kentucky wins it all or loses in the final.
Brad wins if: Florida beats Wisconsin in the final.

(Note: Justin and Steven didn’t submit brackets to the group, so I’m not sure how they’re doing in their brackets.)

Clara, who was in third-to-last place after the first weekend, is now my favorite to win our bracket. Madness indeed.

These results lead me to a new picking strategy next year. I plan on crunching the numbers for the first two rounds, then turning into a monkey and picking randomly for the next two. For my final four picks and championship game picks, I plan on letting emotion rule the day.

With all of these picking styles taken into account, however, one thing is pretty clear: VisionPoint staffers should stick to their day jobs. As much as some of us would like to be, we’re apparently just not cut out to be bracketologists.