Super Bowl Square

Blogging has been light this week--all right, non-existent--because of family health issues, spouse's departure for Hawaii, and the burglary of an absent relative's home nearby, not to mention some interesting but time-consuming projects at work. Have you ever noticed that stuff happens in waves? This is a corollary of the old "death happens in threes" rule, which I'm sure can be explained by the mathematics of randomness. Periods of quiet are followed by periods of frenetic activity brought on by unplanned events, and we think there's a pattern or explanation, but there's really not.

The "random walk" theory posits that changes in stock prices are random, and therefore unpredictable. Chartists, often called technical analysts, divine historical patterns, but, more importantly, future trends in stock prices from looking at their charts. These schools of thought have been warring for forty years, and both have evidence to support their theories. My mind supports the random walkers, but my heart belongs to the chartists because I'd like to believe there's an explanation for historical occurrences. Maybe that's why I'm not an atheist. Whew! this is getting heavy, especially on a Super Bowl Sunday.

My office has a Super Bowl pool in which I am a regular participant. There is absolutely no skill involved. Each player buys at least one $10 square in a 10 x 10 matrix. Numbers from 0 to 9 are chosen randomly for each column and row, and if the units digit in the score matches the intersecting square at the end of a quarter, the player wins. My square this year has dismal prospects, a Patriots 4 and Panthers 4. For me to win a payout (1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarters - $200; final score - $400), the score would have to be 14-14, 24-14, etc. but how likely is that with these two low-scoring teams?

[The score at the end of the first quarter is 0-0, as many had foreseen. The lady who had the zero-zero square seems to always win....wait, maybe I'm falling into the trap of discerning a pattern where none exists. On the other hand, maybe the fix could be in, just as it was with the stock market....hmm, who set these supposedly "random" numbers anyway?]

In 1989 I came closest to winning a Super Bowl square. The San Francisco 49ers were playing the Cincinnati Bengals, and the 49ers had just kicked a field goal with less than a minute remaining in the third quarter. The 6-6 score now matched my square, and I was relishing the thought of having an extra $200. After all, what were the chances someone would score in the next 50 seconds? On the ensuing kickoff the Bengals returner, Stanford Jennings, ran all the way back for a touchdown. Stanford Jennings, destroyer of dreams. I later found some consolation when my rooting interest, the 49ers, mounted a game-winning touchdown drive in the last two minutes.

I learned the valuable lesson that a capricious universe could upend our best-laid plans. Of course, later that year, we had an earthquake, but that's a story for another time. © 2004 Stephen Yuen