About Mr. Sheep's performance, does this imaginary creature have a statistical advantage by virtue of 7 picks vs. 6 for all us real creatures?
Assumption: Mr. Sheep has 7 picks because #6 and #7 were selected by the same number of real participants. The worst performing pick has more impact on a total of 6 picks than a total of 7 picks.
Theory: If Mr. Sheep has 7 selections working for him, then he has an advantage. In particular, his worst performing stock is buffered by having 6 others to raise the average. Might it be fairer to weight Mr. Sheep's #6 and #7 at half the weighting of the other 5, thus allowing the first 5 to have the same weighting as other contestants and #s 6 and 7 to have half the weighting as other contestants' picks?
Personally I like the idea that Mr. Sheep represents the concensus of the VMC community, but the potential advantage of the 7th pick may be giving our concensus pick more credit than is statistically deserved. I suppose the answer to this uncertainty may be determined by looking to see whether Mr. Sheep's #6 and #7 picks are doing better than the average of his other 5, which would verify they are providing the statistical advantage over the rest of the field. Just a thought as we are now only a third of the way thru the contest.
Why would I think of condemning Mr. Sheep? Jealousy, I guess, as I was actually at #2 once upon a time, and my performance has now fallen to #40. But perhaps the reason I have fallen so far is that one of my 6 picks was WHAI, and if I'd had 7 picks, I doubt I'd have fallen so far so fast.
In once sense, as everyone on TV is pointing fingers at others for the slow start in New Orleans, I thought it would be a more productive waste of my time to just point the finger at Mr. Sheep instead of watching TV.
Paul Litman: "Avoid panic selling & avoid overconfident buying."
AI
