Who did win?

This is a follow-up to my last post, "Who's going to win?", where nine sports writers were asked who was going to win the Master's golf tournament. Only two of the nine experts correctly picked Phil Mickelson to win the tournament. I'm not one to rub it in. Also, I know so little about golf that I would have never considered picking a winner in that tournament. But it is a good lesson to remind ourselves about how decisions and predictions can be made. Seven golf experts were wrong about this. Yet, they will probably still be considered experts and will probably be asked the same question next year. Maybe they will pick the winner correctly in a majority of tournaments. Maybe they won't. It doesn't matter! These kinds of predictions only matter if you are in charge of making t-shirts that are printed with the winner's name on them and you have to finish them before the tournament ends. And even then, if you're stupid enough to spend money on that ahead of time, you deserve to lose the money you wasted.


Later this week, though, I am going to make a prediction about a technology that I think will make a big difference in the fields of computers and embedded electronic control. Here, predictions can be helpful to get you to look into something that may be important in the future. I want to work on this for a while to make sure I write it well. And no, I am not going to be writing about the Apple iPad!