Fun

How To Maximize The Chance Of Winning The Office Super Bowl Pool

Forget climatology. It’s time for something really controversial. How to fill in those grid squares on the Super Bowl office pool. An example of one is shown below.

The full details are over at Edgehogs. Be sure to also make your picks for the game itself. The most especially prescient personage will pull home an electronic gizmo gratis.

Super Bowl Grid

Super Bowl Grid

Sometimes you get to see the labels on the grid rows and columns first, but sometimes you don’t and those labels are written in after everybody has bought their box. If you get to see them first, then use the strategy outlined. If you don’t see them until after, then at least you will be able to help figure your chances before the game.

Not surprisingly, it turns out some squares were seen more often than others. The green X’s show the best locations, and the red O’s show the worst.

Perhaps we should have some sort of poll: how many will watch the game? how many watch more for the commercials? how many genuinely follow the game? how many remember that spring training, and therefore a return to real sports, is only a month away?

Or maybe we should have a game-day temperature forecast contest?

Categories: Fun, Statistics

10 replies »

  1. If you get to see the numbers before picking the squares, whoever is running the office pool is doing it wrong.

  2. BobN,

    True ordinarily. But not every office is filled with rapid football fans or serious gamblers. Some people just like to play and to bet for fun.

  3. Someone in our office is running a variant where every time a team scores, someone wins (so not just picking a box at the end of each quarter). I believe the amounts are determined at the end of the game, but not sure how it is distributed.

  4. “. . . how many remember that spring training, and therefore a return to real sports, is only a month away?”

    Careful, careful! Some of us appreciate the greater complexity of football, notwithstanding the sublime simplicity of baseball.

    Lukewarm 49er fan here, almost recovered from that heartbreaking overtime loss. Oh, well. Will be watching the game Sunday anyway

  5. I propose that the NFL adopt new scoring rules to ballance out the inequlaties of the Superbowl pool scoring grid.

    From my fantasy leage:
    Field Goals < 20 yards are worth 2 points
    missed field goals are -1 point.

    And, get rid of the extra point kick. 2 point conversions, only.

    SF Giants Fan Fest is on Saturday.

  6. If the numbers aren’t known, a good strategy would be to avoid the diagonals. They contain no X’s and 3 O’s. Could this be updated to show the actual counts in each cell?

  7. But then, (2,2) might not lie on a diagonal if the numbers are chosen randomly. Best strategy is not to play. Or play so much you average out at even.

  8. You say it all, DAV, when you say, “Best strategy is not to play.” True for most gambles.

    Say, a comment thread where nobody’s upset. A miracle!

  9. I’ve hit this topic before in blogging. My original position, based on the attempts to sue oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico for not doing enough to prevent AGW and thereby making Katrina a worse hurricane, was to put government-funded science under a version of Sarbanes-Oxley.

    http://www.redstate.com/blogs/cni_redrum/2007/aug/23/modern_science_needs_its_version_of_sarbanes_oxley

    I’m not as sure now that I know more about how screwed-up SarBox is, but I still think we are significantly under threat of junk litigation backed by corrupt and politicized science.

    http://www.redstate.com/repair_man_jack/2011/01/24/knowledge-vs-power/

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