Languish Presidential Election!

[Razgovory]

I can't tell if you are trolling or are truly loopy.

[derspiess]

We will see a big Bradley effect this election where women and minorities fashionably support Obama in public, but abandon him in the voting booth.

I'm not holding my breath.  That was supposed to happen in 2008.

[Neil]

So I voted yesterday. This shouldn't really be any big surprise, but I voted for Democrats all the way down. I also voted for Arkansas's medical marijuana bill. I never thought the day would come when I'd get a chance to vote for weed.

But who did you vote for in the non-partisan section?

[DGuller]

It's sort of like picking the March Madness bracket, if you just go on ranking all the way you'll do terribly. Upsets will happen.

Missed that the first time.  If you pick strictly on ranking, you will indeed do terribly.  However, that's the least terrible prediction available to you.  That's because you are expected to do very terribly no matter what bracket you go with.  However, if the tournament were repeated millions of times, going by rankings will likely do better than any other strategy. 

Deviating from rankings on the theory that upsets have to happen somewhere is a stupid strategy.  You should deviate from the rankings only if you have a superior insight to the people or system that generated the rankings.  (You should also deviate from rankings if you split money for ties in your pool, but that's a unique shortcoming of the betting structure rather than probability theory).

[derspiess]

Deviating from rankings on the theory that upsets have to happen somewhere is a stupid strategy.  You should deviate from the rankings only if you have a superior insight to the people or system that generated the rankings.  (You should also deviate from rankings if you split money for ties in your pool, but that's a unique shortcoming of the betting structure rather than probability theory).

Incorrect.  Deviating from the rankings is usually necessary to differentiate your picks from the rest of the pack-- at least in a pool with a large number of people participating.  Picking only according to the rankings will probably guarantee you won't come in last, but it will also keep you from finishing high enough to win money.

Having said that, it's usually a good idea to go conservative with your final 4 & national champion picks.

[Eddie Teach]

Seems to me going by the rankings is a good way to get better-than-average results as far as wins and losses, but you'll lose to the people who made inspired/lucky guesses. Considering you don't really win anything for being in the 60th or 70th percentile there's not much point.

[DGuller]

Incorrect.  Deviating from the rankings is usually necessary to differentiate your picks from the rest of the pack-- at least in a pool with a large number of people participating.  Picking only according to the rankings will probably guarantee you won't come in last, but it will also keep you from finishing high enough to win money.

That goes under the category of splitting money for ties.  In complicated betting structures, sometimes it does make sense to go for combination that will be correct less often, but will be uniquely correct if you guess right.  In a simple betting structure, where you're getting simple odds for guessing the bracket correctly, you should go with straight rankings, absent superior insight.

That's akin to stock picking competitions.  If the goal for you is to maximize your money gain, you should go with an index.  If the goal is to come in first place out of thousands of participants, you should instead sink all your money in one company that seems very likely to go bankrupt.  You'll lose your money the vast majority of the time, but once in a while the company's fortunes would improve, and you'll multiply your investment many times over.  When you get rewarded for coming in first, you should find the investment with the biggest volatility possible, and ignore expected value of the bet.  That's why stock picking competitions are so incredibly retarded.

[Valmy]

Well I voted.  It was sort of ridiculous there were about 40 or so things to vote on but in doing my research only about three of the races were really contested to any serious degree.  Ah well.

[derspiess]

How fun would it be if we had a 269-269 tie?  The silliness from 2000 would look tame by comparison

[Valmy]

How fun would it be if we had a 269-269 tie?  The silliness from 2000 would look tame by comparison

It would be awesome.

[Barrister]

How fun would it be if we had a 269-269 tie?  The silliness from 2000 would look tame by comparison

It would be awesome.

I enjoyed the speculation of a Romney-Biden White House in that event. 

[Phillip V]

A split decision, be it tie or popular loss / electoral win, would cause mass protests. But enough to spill a little blood and burn down some buildings?

[Razgovory]

Conservatives don't burn down buildings.  They blow them up.  With truck bombs.

[derspiess]

Conservatives don't burn down buildings.  They blow them up.  With truck bombs.

Easy now.

[derspiess]

How fun would it be if we had a 269-269 tie?  The silliness from 2000 would look tame by comparison

It would be awesome.

It seems plausible.  Not likely per se, but I'd say more likely than it was for any election so far in our lifetimes.

Grumbler excluded, of course.