By -
It's that time of year again. It's time to celebrate the madness of a national collegiate basketball tournament. I personally love the excitement of the games. This is one of the only collegiate sports playoff systems that allows the little guy to make a run for a national championship. Who doesn't like a good Cinderella story? This year teams like Duke, Wisconsin, and Kentucky probably wouldn't like that kind of story but I for one love to sit on the edge of my seat and cheer on the tiny schools with the odds stacked against them as they knock down Goliath universities with thousands more students and much more money with a single shot in the final seconds of a game. Click here for a 15 minute reminder of the greatness of the NCAA Tournament.

I have never won a Bracket Challenge and often wonder if anyone consistently picks the right schools to win the tournament games. I wonder if the task of picking the winners of the tournament is a science, an art, or a mixture of the both? The folks at Kaggle, a community of data scientists are asking similar questions about the science of choosing teams to win the tournament. Intel, the inventor of the x86 microprocessor, is teaming up with Kaggle to host a competition among scientists to develop the most accurate algorithm for predicting tournament outcomes. Sadly, I do not have time to create my own algorithm but I do have time for my own little experiment.

I will be comparing the predictive capabilities of four individuals:

Jeff: Jeff is a businessman who loves basketball. He follows the game closely but he has a normal day job. Jeff participates in several bracket challenges each year and does his research about the teams in the tournament.

Gary Parrish: Gary is an analyst for CBS Sports, who call him a "College Basketball Insider." He will serve as our resident expert.

My Daughter #1: 7 years old. Does not care about basketball. Nor does she care who wins the NCAA tournament unless it means for some reason we would get to go out for ice cream at some point.

My Daughter #2: 4 years old. She doesn't care about basketball. In fact, she is mildly annoyed when I turn off cartoons in order to watch basketball games. She would, however, tolerate a game or two on a Saturday morning if there is a chance that a trip to the park would follow.

I posted the brackets for each person below and will update the blog regularly so you can follow their progress throughout the tournament.












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Casting Lots and Determining God's Will

By -
What is the deal with casting lots in the OT and why is it used in the NT? Was this a valid way to determine the will of God? Can we cast lots today to determine God’s will for ourselves? When I first became a Christian and began to read through the Bible, This subject led to some very challenging questions that I could not find answers to. Recently, our pastor, David, has been taking the church through the book of Acts on Sunday nights and last Sunday we read about how the disciples used lots to decide who the replacement disciple would be for Judas Iscariot. This reminded me of my own question that I had before and how many others may also be questioning this as well. Why would believers use what would appear to be a system of chance in order to distinguish the will of God? To answer this question, let’s look at 3 things. First, we will need to understand just what “lots” is and what it was used for. Second, we will look at an OT passage in which it was used. Finally, we wil...
Read more

Inclusionist, Exclusionist, Pluralist...What do they all mean?

By -
While I was preparing this week to be on a panel for the discussion of theological issues I came across a very difficult question that pushed me to spend some time solidifying my own doctrine on a certain issue. The question came from a student in our youth group: "How can a person who has never been exposed to the gospel (through no fault of his own) be expected to come to a saving knowledge of Christ?" This simple question has been discussed for centuries and divided denominations since the first denomination was formed. Dr. Ken Keathley, now a professor at a Southern Baptist seminary wrote an interesting work on this very question. His paper delineates the differences between the three schools of thought on the issue presented. The excerpt presented below is from his paper titled, "None Dare Call it Treason: Is an Inclusivist a Paul Revere or a Benedict Arnold?" appearing in the Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry, Vol. 1 No. 2. "Exclusivism holds that...
Read more

The Trinity and The Triple Point

By -
In our monthly theological discussion group, a group of men and I recently discussed the Trinity . We now understand the Trinity to be: The unity of God subsisting in three distinct persons. We reviewed the different views of the Trinity, how the concept is defined in the Bible, and how it has come to be accepted as the orthodox view currently. At the close of our discussion , we began to discuss the different analogies of the Trinity. Here are a few that we discussed through the direction of Millard Erickson's book "Christian Theology." First, we talked about the egg. The egg has the yoke, the surrounding liquid, and the shell. All of these make up the egg. The egg is like the Trinity in that it has three parts unified into one egg. This is obviously an incomplete analogy since each of the parts of the egg are not really completely separated and yet totally unified. Each part of the egg has a different nature. So the egg analogy fails. What about the human/humanity ana...
Read more