Bunching Theory

My top March Madness bracket is doing pretty well. Its ranked at 89% compared to all other brackets. I'm not sure how they figure that percent. Actually I have two at 89%. I would have thought it would be higher. I had 7 of the 8 Elite Eight teams. That's including having Notre Dame in the final eight which I bet most didn't have. My bracket where I picked based on the alphabet and had Albany winning it all is not doing as well - 4.6%.

There is so much luck involved in this. West Virginia and Notre Dame are not that different. Thursday Kentucky crushed WV 78-39. They doubled their score. A complete domination. Two nights later Notre Dame comes within a few seconds of defeating Kentucky. There's got to be a certain amount of luck in that. Thursday WV probably didn't play quite as well as usual and Kentucky played better than usual. Saturday was just the opposite.

There is a mathematical thing called the bunching theory that I think happens a lot. The ratio of heads to tails is 50-50 in the long run. But in the short run, things can be a lot different. It isn't that strange to flip a coin a lot and have a run of 5 heads in a row, or maybe out of 9 tosses, 8 will be heads. If a 50% shooter misses 8 out of 9, he thinks he has to change something. Maybe, but probably not. Streaks, both good and bad, just happen and you should just ride them out.

Same thing in regular life. When your having a terrible time and everything seems to be going wrong, just ride it out. It could be that you're making bad decisions and that is what's causing this, but chances are that's not what is happening. That's my advice. But don't thank me. Thank the math gods.