I was in Saskatchewan, Canada last week for my first-ever snowmobiling experience.
When I got there, everyone was in great spirits. Apparently, this is a sport done with day drinking, lots of laughter, and abandon.
We split into groups: Insane, Merely Crazy, and the Turtles.
I figured I was relatively safe with the Turtles. Still, I have to admit that I was a little nervous. The machines are capable of gliding over the snow at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour. And, I heard stories that 70 percent of these outings ended in some form of injury. Those are some sphincter-tightening things to put together.
The scenery was majestic.
But I didn't notice till it was over. Humans are deletion creatures. That means they can hold seven things (plus or minus two) in their memory. Everything else gets filtered or deleted. For example, in chess, a grandmaster can focus on the portion of the board that is most proximately related to winning. A novice, however, wastes their buffers with thoughts like "the horsey-thing goes up two and over one."
While everyone else was focused on having fun, I focused on how to make the sled do something. There were no instructions that said click this, press that. Here's the brake, or, the three most important things to remember are …
I quickly learned two rules. The first, you have to lean in the direction that you want to turn (otherwise the sled tips over). By the way, it took me a few iterations to figure this one out.
Here is a picture of me just after they dug me out from under the sled.
The second rule is to try to stay on the sled. I never quite figured that rule out fully.
I guess you can be skillful, you can be lucky, or you can pray.
Luckily, I saw Father Rac before we started. My question was whether he was here to bless the participants or perform last rites.
After a nice conversation, he said he'd pray for me.
In my industry, we call that hedging.
I did last longer than the sled. It had to be towed.
Meanwhile, I still have ten fingers and ten toes, ended the day vertically, and had a ton of fun. Victory!
I’ll suck less next time.
Why You Can't Predict March Madness
Last year, I shared some facts about March Madness. For example, the chances of a perfect bracket are at 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. For those who don't wanna do the math that's 9.2 quintillions.
This year, 16-seed UMBC (The Chesapeake Bay Retrievers) beat 1-seed Virginia, and left no perfect brackets after only 28 Games.
As we came into the Elite Eight, nobody picked all eight. Almost nobody predicted No. 3 Texas Tech making it this far ... and there were 17,304,320 digital brackets this year.
Is there any way to accurately predict something with this many potentialities and this much discord?
Different factors can feel like they provide an edge ... knowing the history of teams, their ranks, how often they've been to the Final Four, or how great their coach is ... but even that knowledge can lead you astray. You'd think an NCAA analyst might have a better shot at a perfect bracket than your grandma or co-worker, but several of the highest-ranked brackets this year were guesses.
It's fun guessing when you're making bets on college basketball, but what if this is your livelihood ...
Prediction is hard ... especially about the future.
The way people fill out their brackets often mimics the way investors pick trades or allocate assets. Some use gut feel, some base their decisions on rank and past performance, and some use predictive models ... and some of us get disappointed when Duke loses.
Apparently, humans aren't as great at prediction as we think we are.
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