The Picks Game - Finals

PULL BACK TO REVEAL Vizzini munching on an apple, holding the knife to Buttercup's throat. She is blindfolded.

A PICNIC SPREAD is laid out. A tablecloth, two goblets and between them, a small leather wine container. And some cheese and a couple of apples. The picnic is set on a lovely spot, high on the edge of a mountain path with a view all the way back to the sea.

The Man In Black comes running around the path, sees Vizzini, slows. The two men study each other. Then --

VIZZINI

So, it is down to you. And it is down to me.

(William Goldman, The Princess Bride, 1985)

And for us, it is down to

Men

Federer - Nadal

Women

Henin - Ivanovic

The race is almost run, but the eventual champions are not yet known.  Who will they be?

As time has gone by in the picks game, two distinct strategies have emerged.  I will call them Sniper and Full Court Press.

The Sniper strategy, exemplified by players like patrick and Sahadev, has been to only take shots with a high chance of hitting.  Remember, when we set up the game, we said that there was a minimum threshhold to be eligible for victory, but players need not pick all matches.  The snipers have stayed focussed and disciplined, and in one case 100% on target.

Then there have been the Full Court Press pickers - ready to call the 51/49 matches, the Henin/Serena Williams cage matches.  After the event, it might seem obvious that Henin's clay court prowess would be decisive - but the tribe tilted 46/54 to Williams, one of only 11 calls missed by the Tribe to date.

As well as the pure pleasure of taking part, there ought to be honors distributed to those who stood out from the pack.  So I propose to honor both the Snipers and the Full Court Pressers, as well as those who marched to a different drummer, and had it pay off - the best of the upset picks.

Snipers: patrick (34/0) (!), Macca and Split Infinitive (39/2), Sahadev (38/4)

Full Court Pressers: lilly potter (50/7), Ali C (49/10) and the Tribe (49/10) (!), Fleaman (48/9) and mmmm8 (48/12), Ray Stonada, ginger and and gvgirl (47/10), The Original French(ie) (46/10)

The Tribe has been extraordinarily accurate, going 49/10 (83%), with one 50/50 coin toss not counted.

What's also startling is that the Tribe's assessment of its own confidence has been correlated with its accuracy - in general, the more Tribe members picked a player, the more likely it actually was that that player won.  There is a feast of data here for the social scientists and economists.

One final thought: does it matter if you watch the matches or not?  As a Nadal supporter, can you jinx Rafa by sneaking a peak at the TV - or even the scoreboard at a critical moment?

You might be interested to know that physicist David Mermin - the only scientist to get an elementary particle named after a Lewis Carroll monster - explored this question in his seminal 1989 paper "Can you help your team tonight by watching on TV?"  Check it out, and maybe we can have some more discussions of the Einstein - Podolsky - Rosen paradox when Wimbledon rolls around.

-- Andrew