Autistic Kid Picks Perfect NCAA Bracket

[Shockolate]

Typical that is was an autistic person. Just kidding.

I'm more a hockey fan myself. I called every playoff series correctly last year, except for the wings-jackets series, in which me and all of my friends picked the jackets to win as a joke (It was their first playoff okay?).

 

[Delusibeta]

And in gaming news, not one person nailed the first round of The Escapist's March Madness. For which I blame Zynga.

So predicting two rounds of any large tournament accurately is very impressive.

 

[Asehujiko]

One wonders what would have happened if Hermann tried his hand at picking which game developer would win March Mayhem [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/global/tournaments/standings/2-2010-March-Mayhem-Developers-Showdown]. So Alex, if you're reading, who do you think is going to win?

Zynga. You don't need a mathematical genius to figure that out.

 

[VGStrife]

The odds of accomplishing that feat is 1 in 13,460,000. There's more of a chance that you'll be struck by lightning, win the lottery or be killed by a dog.

Isn't the chance of winning the lottery 1 in 13,900,000 ish?

 

[internetzealot1]

Keep on this story. I want to know if he gets it all right.

 

[Moriarty]

well yeah, the odds mitght be 1 to 13,460,000 but if you have three million people guessing around, you shouldn't be surprised if someone got it right

Your maths is a little off

3,000,000/13,460,000 means that if they all pick a unique one there's 22% of all options covered. So pretty much just a 1/5 chance that this would happen (assuming once again a completely unique list). And odds (irony of using odds to discuss chance...) are some were replicated, due to the nature of some teams universally thought to be better then others.

So yeah pretty impressive all the same.

You accusing my math to be "off" is interesting, considering I didn't actually calculate anything

 

[Deleted]

someone was gonna get it eventually. The odds aren't as impossible as they look if that many people are guessing too.

 

[Huxleykrcc]

Frankly, I find the interest in stories like this a little absurd--no amount of intelligence will allow you to accurately predict something this variable. No one freaks out when an ESPN secretary's picks are more accurate than their host's, because everyone knows she picked teams based on uniform colors and just got lucky. I doubt this is much different.

In other words, there's no evidence to suggest that great skill is at play here, let alone evidence to suggest that his disorder created that skill.

 

[Riobux]

I don't get it, what's the relevance of him being autistic to being able to pick the perfect NCAA brackets? I mean, come on...

 

[spinFX]

One wonders what would have happened if Hermann tried his hand at picking which game developer would win March Mayhem [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/global/tournaments/standings/2-2010-March-Mayhem-Developers-Showdown]. So Alex, if you're reading, who do you think is going to win?

I bet even he could not have predicted Zynga or Turbine (if he didn't know about last year's vote begging). He would probably have chosen an actual really good developer, one that is hard to argue against. One that has earned international recognition by producing fantastic, award winning, genre pushing, technologically great, etc etc games. When did Turbine or Zynga ever do any of that...

I do wonder if anyone in the Escapist will have predicted MM 100%. I sure know I didn't pick Zynga at all, and there was 1 other in the first round I lost on. I actually thought I'd get them all Mainly because I was voting on a combination of knowing what the Escapist forum goers would vote, not the ones just signing up for Zynga (I even took into account the ones signing up from Turbine).

If someone predicted the Zynga dominance... My lord what a champion amongst men.

 

[Anticitizen_Two]

He picked Syracuse. He's done. Still an impressive feat though, to pick two rounds perfectly in this crazy upset-filled March Madness.

 

[Dooly95]

Who gives a shit that he's autistic? Why do writers feel the need to point these things out, they don't change anything :/

Yeah, you're right.
Who cares that a kid with a serious mental illness correctly picked the winning teams in March Madness with perfect accuracy over all the 'experts' and people who do this stuff for a living, and who do not have that mental handicap. That shouldn't make a difference, right?

Except that it makes it all the more incredible.
A person without that problem doing this would be pretty awesome.
But a kid with autism? How is that not extra awesome?

I'm sure that someone with an illness isn't going to be all that happy when everyone around him is yelling 'autistic'! all the freaking time. Yes, he got the bracket right over the experts. There's only so many permutations of that list, as many have said earlier, someone would of got it right sooner or later.

To people with this illness, autism is a label other people put on them.

 

[Do4600]

So he's a March Madness Savant?

 

[rainman2203]

I would give that kid a high five for sure.

 

[Poomanchu745]

He got his first one wrong when Butler upset Syracuse. It almost impossible to get a completely right bracket and this was no different. Although only getting one wrong so far in this tourny is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Blade Chunk]

Yeah it comes down to odds. I can get a room of chimps to pick the winner, and if one has a mental disorder it's a good pat on the back news story? Please.

 

[Wintermoot]

that kid was very lucky!