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Computers Suck! People Rule! Final Four Edition

by Terrence O'Brien on April 10, 2009 at 08:30 PM



Victory!

We can still claim superiority over the machines! And as long as we continue to be better at picking winners during the NCAA's March Madness, we should be safe from the emergence of Skynet.

Computer scientists have been using statistics, databases, and computer models for years to try and predict the outcome of sports tournaments. Of particular interest is the NCAA's basketball tournament, which culminates in the Final Four.

This year, the computer models were handed their digital asses by human instincts when it came to more accurately picking bracket winners. Joel Sokol, a professor at Georgia Tech, told CNN that, generally, computers are better at picking Final Four winners than people. Yet, Sokol's own models only managed to choose one of the four finalists, although they did correctly pick the University of North Carolina as the overall winner.

Sokol did take some solace in the fact that his model and President Obama picked the same Final Four. Hey, whatever it takes to make you feel better, buddy. We're gonna go do a dance in front of our Macs and flip off our PCs while reminding them how much better we are than them. [From: CNN]

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Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, ArtificialIntelligence, basketball, final four, FinalFour, march madness, MarchMadness, ncaa, predictions, sports

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