So Does Nate Silver Have NCAA Skill?

At the start of the NCAA tournament I noted that Nate Silver's past few NCAA brackets failed to show skill. What that means is that Silver's predictions failed to result in more winning picks at the start of the tournament than one would achieve simply by picking the higher seeded team to win each game.

I then went out on a limb with a prediction:

I am going to go out on a limb and predict a >50% chance that Silver's 2013 predictions fail to show skill as well.

With the Final Four set and only Louisville left in both Silver's bracket and the top seed naive bracket we can declare a winner.

• Silver's bracket resulted in 41 correct picks from 60 games.
• The top seed naive bracket resulted in 41 correct picks from 60 games.

All the fancy methodology and analysis performed no better than a naive bracket. Sorry Nate, still no skill! ;-)

It is easier to predict predictions than to predict the real world.